


love and victory

by bigspoonnoya



Series: love and victory [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst and Humor, Coming Out, Coming of Age, First Time, GAY AWAKENINGS, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Canon, University, and it turned into this sappy gay monster, the original prompt was them playing intramural vb together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-03 16:12:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4107055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigspoonnoya/pseuds/bigspoonnoya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After losing to Shiratorizawa in their final Spring High preliminary, Kageyama leaves Miyagi on a sports scholarship, and Hinata remains in Sendai for university. Or, that’s what Hinata <i>thinks</i>, until he runs into Kageyama on the first day of volleyball intramurals and they set out to form another winning combination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love and victory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chiharu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiharu/gifts).



> Whatever you do, don't listen to "Portugal" by Walk The Moon and think deeply about post-canon KageHina. Save yourselves. 
> 
> The M rating is for language and for an awkward, affectionate first gay sexual experience.
> 
> Enjoy and HAPPY HOLS!

It is one of those rare twilights where you can see the setting sun and the rising moon, both hanging in a pink-blue-yellow sky. The wind lashes through the trees and a gray patch amasses at the horizon; a warm October storm, like the weather forgot it’s not summer anymore.

“I don’t want to do this here,” Kageyama calls, straggling.

Hinata picks his feet up over muddy rivets, the grass tall enough to brush his waist. “Ukai said we can’t do it in the gym, and it scares my mom.” He has ridden his bike past this sunken field nearly every day for three years, but never ventured into the thick of it. You can’t even see the valley with Karasuno and the town from here—it’s just mountain after mountain, and the tiny sliver of the road through the trees.

Behind him, Kageyama swears, and he turns to see his friend flat on his ass in the muck.

“God fucking damn it!”

Hinata helps to pull him up, stifling a chuckle, earning Kageyama’s glare. There’s a huge slick of mud down the side of his practice sweats. “I told you I didn’t want to come out here. My parents—my dad’s going to kill me,” he mutters, examining his ruined clothes. Hinata ignores the protest and tries to drag him toward the bottom of the slope, but Kageyama stands staring at the hand on his arm until Hinata lets go and shoves down a weird feeling. He keeps heading down into the field.

“ _I_ told _you_ , there’s nowhere else.”

“There’s got to be somewhere else.”

“We’re already here, okay, Kageyama-kun?” And they’ve reached their destination: a wide, pebbly riverbank, the stream running quiet and shallow. A couple of pips on the surface show it’s starting to rain. Hinata stops and stuffs the toes of his shoes into the rocky sand, the sharp breeze whipping his open Karasuno jacket around his torso.

Kageyama steps into place at his side. Hinata doesn’t have to look to know he’s there—he just feels Kageyama’s presence, automatically, viscerally. In three years that’s only gotten stronger.

“Are you ready?” he asks. A drop of rain hits his cheek. A huge tree at the edge of the clearing undulates under the vicious wind. He feels Kageyama nod, feels them inhale and close their eyes in tandem.

And then they start to scream.

That first scream drags all the air from Hinata’s lungs, echoes off the hills and back to them as they scream again and again—running up and down the bank, slamming their feet into the ground, swinging their arms with aimless fury at the air. It goes on for minutes, this purest expulsion of frustration. Hinata screams until he’s sweating, and his throat aches, and his fists are so tight he’s dug red grooves into the palms of his hands.

Kageyama falls to his knees by the stream and takes a huge breath and dunks his head into the water, just as the rain begins. A light, warm shower, it feels good on Hinata’s overheated skin. He collapses on his back by Kageyama, getting sprinkled by the rain as he heaves breath after breath to recover himself. His pulse pounds in his ears. Kageyama pulls out of the water, gasping for air, the river water running off his long bangs and down his nose.

“Shit,” he says, and lies back next to Hinata.

“Yeah.” Hinata swallows, and then tries something: “Shit!” It echoes through the clearing, wind distorting the sound. _Shit… shi… shh_. Silence follows, apart from the wind and their breathing.

“We were always going to lose to Shiratori.”

Rain pools on Hinata’s chin. It runs down his jaw. Soon it will soak through his clothes; his mother won’t be happy when he gets home.

“Don’t say that,” he manages.

“We were,” Kageyama presses on, monotonous, “We beat them in the prelims two years in a row. A third was unlikely. They’re the strongest team in the prefecture—”

“ _We’re_ the strongest team in the prefecture, Kageyama!” Hinata sits up, slamming his fist into the sand between them. “If you thought we were always going to lose, why even play? You sound like fucking Tsukishima.”

Kageyama doesn’t reply. Hinata glares at the rain hitting the stream, his elbows digging into his knees. He could scream again. Slowly, struggling to find his balance, Kageyama sits up beside him.

“Sorry. I’m—I’m frustrated. Things are… hard right now. I’m…” His voice cracks and he turns away.

“I’m frustrated too,” Hinata says through his teeth. For three years he’s turned to every setback, every lost point or set or match, and said _next time – next time I’ll beat you – next time, you’ll see_.

Yesterday he played his last official game as a member of Karasuno High School’s Boys Volleyball Club.

They lost. Two years ago Hinata thought he understood when he watched Daichi and Suga and Asahi hug for five minutes straight after they went out in the Spring High; and he’d thought he understood last February, when Noya and Tanaka trashed the clubroom screaming after their loss to Nekoma. He thought he understood, because he couldn’t imagine how much it would hurt to know there is no next time.

Now he doesn’t have to imagine.

Yeah, he understands perfectly—he understands being punched in the gut, so he understands _this_ , because they feel just the same.

Kageyama reaches out and squeezes his shoulder; Hinata instinctively sighs and leans against his teammate, his friend, their upper arms pressing together. They couldn’t have done that when they were fifteen, but now they move as easily off the court as they do on. In sync, not questioning the necessity of being close.

The rain seems to be letting up, but it doesn’t matter now that they’re both soaked to the bone anyway. It’s funny how neither of them thought to mention it.

“When I visit, can I come to your practices?” Hinata asks, peering off thoughtfully. “We could do the quick, like as a drill for the defense. It’s a college-level play. Tsukuba is only three or four hours by train.”

Kageyama stays silent for a long moment before he says, “Maybe.” Hinata doesn’t know if that pause means something or if it’s just typical Kageyama awkwardness, because Kageyama sucks at this stuff, and Hinata doesn’t have the patience to track his odd behavior.

“I’m so jealous of you, Kageyama-kun,” he wails up into the sky. “ _I want to play volleyball!_ ”

Kageyama hurls a rock into the stream and it sends up a splash, firing back at the rain. “They should’ve given you a sports scholarship.”

“I don’t want a sports scholarship, I want to play volleyball. I want to win.” He wants what they’ve been doing for the past three years—winning, and getting back up and trying again even when they don’t.

Kageyama sighs. Even though Hinata’s grown broader and a little taller (three centimeters! Well, two and a half), Kageyama is still huge next to him, and his sigh shakes his wide chest. “Me too.”

“Then they’ll be lucky to have you!”

“Yeah, right,” Kageyama grunts. “When I’m on the Olympic team, I’ll give you a tour of the locker room.”

Hinata grabs his arm. “Wait, Kage—are they tapping you! Did they—”

“Don’t be stupid!” Kageyama snorts and he’s grinning and Hinata, realizing he’s been had, deflates. Kageyama tries to shake off Hinata’s grip, so naturally they turn to tussling back and forth, grabbing loosely at each other.

“That was misleading!”

“You’re too gullible, any normal person would’ve got that I was joking—”

“Are you saying I’m weird, Kageyama-kun?”

“Yeah, did I ever doubt that you’re weird?”

Above their heads, thunder crashes and lightning flashes somewhere nearby—dangerously close—and Kageyama latches over Hinata in a single, jerky motion, swearing profusely and crushing the smaller boy to his chest. He is huge and warm and everywhere on Hinata's thin frame, like a muscular sweater. His heartbeat thuds in Hinata's ear, and Hinata's own pulse quickens in reply, he swoons at the heat and the closeness of it, at the messy slick of windbreaker separating them.

A second passes. A couple more cracks of thunder, growing distant.

They sit there with Kageyama literally attempting to shield him from the elements. They sit there _too long_.

“Kageyama! You’re not going to save me from the thunder!” Hinata elbows his friend in the stomach; the light of self-conscious realization snaps on in Kageyama’s eyes and he scoots away with sand flying around his feet. “We need to go home,” Hinata announces, ignoring the striking redness of Kageyama’s face—it must be the strange light from the sundown. It’s started to rain again, harder this time.

“Hinata,” Kageyama calls to him, as he’s starting to scramble up the muddy hill to where they left their bikes. Kageyama’s voice rings in his ears but he’s preoccupied—and a little scared, out of nowhere, though he isn’t sure of what. His heart thuds against his ribcage and he refuses to look back and see the expression on Kageyama’s face. “Hinata,” he calls, and it echoes off the hillsides. “Hinata! Hinata...” Hinata blinks the rain out of his eyes and keeps grabbing at the reeds to haul himself up.

“Come on! Move your feet, Kageyama-kun!”

It takes a moment, but he finally feels the familiar presence of Kageyama beside him, following him back to the road.

* * *

Hinata can’t believe—no—it’s impossible—he is truly shocked to find that neither of his new roommates at university in Sendai have even _seen_ a volleyball match, let alone played in one. He learns this in the midst of decorating their shared apartment, with its smallish common space and three single bedrooms: how, _how_ could they not want a huge limited edition poster of the 2008 Japanese Olympic team right above the dining table? Shocking stuff.

He hangs the poster in his room instead, alongside photographs of three Karasuno teams, one for each year he played. He looks so young in the first one, so much baby fat. The picture is from early in the season, after their heartbreaking loss to Seijou, and they all seem remarkably resilient, none of failure’s rigidity in their faces. Hinata sprawls in the middle of a dog pile, right near Kageyama. It feels like they barely knew each other then, even spending hours upon hours a day in one another’s company. It’s nothing in comparison to what they became: feared as Karasuno’s 9 and 10, and then as their 6 and 7, and finally as 1 and 2. They were what they had always wanted to be; they’d done it, achieved their goal.

Sometimes ‘friendship’ doesn’t even seem like the right word for him and Kageyama. It’s partnership, symmetry. A sense that one just wouldn’t work right without the other. He owes an indiscriminate chunk of who he is to Kageyama Tobio.

It’s weird to think he won’t see his friend – his partner – for God knows how long, until he can find the time to make it halfway down the country. Maybe they’ve ceased to be partners now that they’re not Karasuno’s 9 and 10, or Karasuno’s anything, not anymore.

But Hinata hates to lose—volleyball matches and people alike.

Kageyama will always be a friend, a partner, a necessity. Even in this new school with its frightening aura of _adulthood_ , he keeps saying things and turning around expecting to see Kageyama agreeing, or arguing, or sipping milk or something, but certainly there. He has to wonder if it’s going to be like that forever, this missing someone like a phantom limb. Three years of eating sleeping breathing volleyball, and you do it all at another person’s side, you’re going to feel their absence keenly. Especially if you’re Hinata Shouyou, and you feel _everything_ keenly.

But at least he won’t be without volleyball. Not completely, even if intramurals aren’t ideal.

This is where his roommates’ disinterest in volleyball goes from _shocking_ to _problematic_.

“We have to form our own teams,” he explains, sounding excited but also desperate, because that’s about how he feels. “And then we compete against other teams in the intramural league—it’ll be great, we’ll have fun, we’ll be playing _volleyball_. We just need six guys!”

His roommates stare at him. One gives the other a nervous glance.

“Sorry, Hinata-san.”

He asks random strangers in his classes, people in line in the cafeteria. They exchange that same nervous glance before politely declining and scurrying away.

Eventually, on a lovely afternoon about two weeks into the school year, he gets out of class and heads to the athletic complex for the first meeting of the intramural league, just praying a team will take him.

If the Karasuno bubble hadn’t already burst, it’s decidedly popped when Hinata enters the gymnasium set aside for club activities. The space stretches three times wider than their gym back home and twice as tall—the same size as most of the tournament gyms they’d played. He doesn’t gasp and _ooo_ at it because he’s not fifteen anymore, but he does stop and drink in that smell of sweat and Salonpas and the familiar _thump thump_ of volleyball on skin. There are people practicing on each of the three courts, and more clustered on the sidelines chatting, as they wait for the meeting to convene. The guys seem big, but they always seem big. He’s used to the spike of terror he feels as he scans the groups of players who will be his newest opponents.

Less familiar is the spike of confusion when his eyes settle on a tall figure, there in the middle court, about to leap for a jump serve.

“ _Kageyama_?”

Kageyama fumbles the serve and the ball comes down on his head—Hinata has the worst déjà vu.

* * *

“Why wouldn’t you _tell_ me you were coming to Tohoku?”

“It happened very last minute, okay?”

“But we’ve been here for two weeks, and you never—”

“I’ve been busy! Can you get off me?”

“I’m not _on you_ ,” Hinata lies. He’s nearly stuck to Kageyama, dogging him into the locker room the moment the intramural meeting ended. He still has no team, but that seems like the least of his problems now.

“Whatever.” Kageyama throws open his locker, putting the door between him and Hinata, but Hinata ducks under it.

“What happened to Tsukuba? Your scholarship?”

Kageyama doesn’t look at him, tugging his sweat-stained shirt over his head. “Tohoku is a better school.”

“Barely—and the volleyball team!”

“There isn’t one.”

“Exactly! You’re a genius player in an intramural league, that’s just wrong.”

Kageyama continues to undress and Hinata does his best to keep communicating his anger while giving him a little privacy, turning to the side and glaring at the opposing row of lockers instead. “It’s not as if you’re a bad player either,” Kageyama points out. “You were a starter on a team that went to nationals two years in a row.”

His former teammate is now down to boxers. This might be some kind of technique to throw Hinata off the case, but they’ve shared too many locker and club rooms and baths for it to really be a distraction. Out the corner of his eye, Hinata even recognizes this particular pair of underwear: black with little blue stars.

“That’s different,” Hinata grumbles, glancing back at the other lockers. “This was my top choice, I worked hard to get in here.” In his second year he sprained his knee just badly enough to realize his years as a player were numbered, but a few weeks on the bench with Take-chan put a new idea in his head. If he became a _teacher_ , he could sponsor a team and be around volleyball forever. So he started using the game as a motivator: he recited English verb conjugations on his morning run; Kageyama would only toss to him during their regular practices once he passed a practice algebra quiz; Yachi helmed a study group that met in the club room during their breaks.

“So did I.” (Ever the competitor, Kageyama had met his efforts blow-for-blow—he refused to be in make-up classes if Hinata was at summer training camp with the team.)

“You didn’t need to!” Hinata blurts, wheeling around to find Kageyama now only in a towel, with his brows knit together. “You’re one of the best setters in Japan, if not _the_ best—you could go pro—you could coach, or play abroad, or—whatever you wanted! Why the hell would you give that up?”

Kageyama slowly closes his locker, and turns to look down at him. For the two and a half centimeters Hinata grew, Kageyama grew four, so he towers over his friend as ever. And his face is serious, dark blue eyes shaded by the sweep of his hair, features sharpened in a glare. Three years ago, that expression would have sent Hinata fleeing to the bathroom; now he folds his arms over his chest and glares back.

It takes Kageyama a long time to speak, and when he does, all he says is, “You’re not going to follow me into the bath, are you?”

“Not _into_ the bath.”

A muscle in Kageyama’s jaw flinches. “Fine.” He twists on his heel and marches for the baths with Hinata hot on his heels. Steam leaks under the door that Kageyama throws open, and Hinata slips inside behind him. Thankfully there’s no one else around, since Hinata really shouldn’t be in here with his shoes on, fully-clothed, and he starts sweating right away. Kageyama, looking more disgruntled by the second, stomps over to the bath and pauses with a glare, giving him a last chance to turn away, or avert his eyes, but Hinata _knows_ that any such budging signals defeat, and defeat isn’t in his repertoire.

Kageyama sniffs, as if to say, _fine, you asked for it_ , and lets the towel fall away from his waist. A new layer of sweat breaks out over Hinata’s skin, and he does his best to maintain eye contact without too much fidgeting.

Kageyama lowers himself into the bath, staring at him. This is definitely weirder when they’re not both… you know… with Hinata just standing there watching. He feels like somehow, even though he was the one to chase his friend in here, _he’s_ losing this fight. His jaw clenches up because that’s unacceptable; ever-competitive, he does the first thing that comes to mind: he kicks off his shoes and pulls his shirt over his head.

The way Kageyama’s mouth falls open is pretty satisfactory, as reactions go. “You said you weren’t—”

Hinata shoves down his shorts and underwear in a single motion and Kageyama has to jerk his head away to avoid looking like a total perv, _ha_. “Now I am!” Hinata sings, and he splashes into the water opposite Kageyama.

He’s not particularly sore but the hot water feels good on his muscles anyway, as he submerges up to his shoulders. Kageyama keeps scowling and then dunks his head under the water. When he comes up it pours off the ends of his bangs, reminding Hinata of that October rain.

He hasn’t really seen Kageyama since then. In passing—at school and in the village, of course—but not properly. The tournaments for which they qualified were over, and as third years pursuing college entrance, they would have been pushed to drop the club Spring High or no. Hinata was thinking of that volleyball club he’d run in ten years, otherwise he’d have stayed on, and he kept coming to practices anyway. Kageyama stopped showing up entirely. They’d thought that was so strange, what with the volleyball scholarship to Tsukuba, a championship school, and his having represented Japan as an Under-19 in the Youth World Championships that past fall. It was as if he had forgotten he was going to make his life out of this sport.

“Kageyama-kun,” he says, tilting his head back, “You can tell me, you know.”

When he glances down Kageyama has sunk into the water up to his chin, eyes closed. He has nothing to say, apparently. Hinata’s fist clenches up of its own accord—friends, partners they might be, but the mutual stubbornness has never been easy. He remembers earlier, wondering if he could still call Kageyama that, _partner_. Maybe not—they’ve been at the same university for two weeks without even a text. They were at the same high school for those last six months and exchanged ten words. So maybe Hinata didn’t get the memo that their friendship ended with their time at Karasuno VBC. He shakes a little, and then grabs the edge of the bath to haul himself out.

“All right,” he shouts, “Don’t tell me! It doesn’t matter. You’re the one who quit, not me. It’s not like we play together anymore, so I don’t care.” Kageyama’s eyes are open, at least, but he looks so flustered to see a naked, dripping wet Hinata clambering out of the bath that there’s no other reaction to gauge. That kills him—stoic Kageyama, unmoved Kageyama, when Hinata himself is shouting at the top of his lungs. How typical. Maybe more than their friendship ending they’ve returned to being strangers, like when they first met. That’s what this reminds him of, he realizes, as he pulls a towel from the dispenser and ties it around his hips—before they became friends, and even before they became enemies, too. He gathers up his clothes without a glance over his shoulder, because why should he look some stranger in the eye?

Back in the gym and dressed again, he grabs his bag and tells the intramurals manager to put him on whichever team needs one more person, that he’s got experience and wants to play. And then he goes home—spending most of the evening composing would-be comebacks and counter-arguments, kicking the sheets off himself even before he falls asleep.

* * *

He wakes up at six o’clock to the buzzing of his phone on his nightstand.

_Kageyama Tobio calling._

Huh. He squints at the screen, rubs his eyes, then hits the accept button.

“It’s six—”

“You have practice at six thirty.”

“Practice? I—am I still asleep?”

“Practice for intramural volleyball. We’re on the same team.” Kageyama sounds… efficient. Blunt. Stiffer than his usual self.

“Intramural teams don’t practice—and, and who is on our team, I couldn’t find any—”

“It’s just us. We’re playing two-on-six.”

Hinata sits up, suddenly very awake. “That’s insane.”

“I told the manager about our history and he agreed it was a fitting handicap.”

The two of them taking on a team of six amateurs—it sounds challenging. Like, _really_ challenging; the kind of thing only him and Kageyama would ever find enjoyable. He can practically see the look of horror on Tsukishima’s face. Hinata grins into the phone. “Where are we practicing?”

Half an hour later he’s spiking in the same gym from yesterday. They fall into it the moment Hinata arrives, the rhythm they’ve honed every day of every week for years. Hinata calls, Kageyama tosses, Hinata leaps. There are alterations and advancements but that pattern stays the same always and it’s comforting, after so many months without. _Call. Toss. Jump. Call. Toss. Jump. Toss. Jump. Toss. Jump._ Sweat runs down Hinata’s face, ringing the neck of his shirt. It feels good. Kageyama makes him feel good, being here with him and focused to the point where that’s all he can see—Kageyama and the ball. An hour in, they exchange a look that agrees the workout is catching up with their rusty bodies, and they sit on the bench, sucking down water and staring out at the empty court in a prolonged, winded silence.

Hinata feels like he’s waiting for something. He doesn’t know what, just knows that a six-in-the-morning phone call can’t just be about practice, not with the way things ended the day before.

“The reason I quit Tsukuba.”

He glances sideways at Kageyama. That’s it, what he was waiting for, he knows it right away. He chews the spout of his water bottle, listening. Kageyama wipes his face on his sleeve. His cheeks are flushed red with the exercise.

“When we lost in the prelims. My dad, he—he’s always thought it was stupid to pursue sports as a career.” He inhales deeply, as if trying to keep his voice level. “Especially volleyball. It’s not popular, he says there’s no point, I could end up with nothing.”

“That’s not true,” Hinata spits, on instinct. He’s heard that said about his game too many times, he springs right to the defensive, but now he sees Kageyama flinch at the harshness of his voice. Listening, right. He’s supposed to be listening. Hinata shrinks back and nods.

After a moment, Kageyama goes on, staring out at the net with a darkened expression. “When we lost in the prelims, he said that it confirmed I’m not good enough to make it professionally.” Hinata’s jaw drops. Kageyama, _not good enough_? “I had to drop the scholarship and come here, because they have a better economics program, and that way I can get into a good business school. And if I’m in Sendai he can keep an eye on me—make sure I’m not wasting my time.” He winces, pained but embarrassed to be pained.

“That’s dumb,” Hinata says, yet again on instinct—this one is too powerful to fight. He twists around to face his friend, who looks dazed by the angry bent of his protest. “Of course you’re good enough, you’re a _genius_ , you’re the best player _I’ve_ ever seen except at the professional games—”

“But that’s it!” Kageyama matches him in vitriol. “I’m second to those guys!” He’s hard on himself, Kageyama is, even if he doesn’t show it. Quiet criticism for not always living up to his own impossibly high standards.

“Yeah, because you’ve got four more years of college play to get there, you’ve got time!”

Kageyama gets to his feet, sounding done. “It doesn’t matter now. I’m at Tohoku.”

Hinata stands too, though his scramble isn’t quite as elegant as Kageyama’s was. His friend is already marching away. “You could transfer, I bet! Call the coaches at Tsukuba, they’ll—”

Kageyama whirls around so fast Hinata stumbles back a foot, bewildered. “This,” seethes the taller boy, his eyes lit furiously, “is why I didn’t tell you I was here. I knew you’d just—give me shit about it!”

“Because it’s a shitty choice! Of course I’m going to give you shit about your shitty choice, someone has to.”

Kageyama, huge, hyperventilating, a little desperate-crazy around the eyes, steps toward him. “You don’t get it. You live in this perfect world—if you knew my dad, if he was _your_ dad—”

“My dad is dead,” says Hinata, flatly. It happened so long ago he can say so without much affect at all.

“You—” Kageyama grunts in frustration and drags a hand over his face. “Can we please just play volleyball and hang out and not talk about this?”

Hinata grits his teeth. “You want me to drop it.”

“I’m not playing with you if you never shut up about this.” Kageyama lifts the volleyball under his arm, and Hinata stares at it hungrily. Kageyama makes him feel good.

“Are you sure—”

“I’m sure!”

Hinata whines, stomps his feet. It’s not fair, none of this, not to him, especially not to Kageyama, who holds out the ball like bait.

“Volleyball or no volleyball?” Well. When he puts it that way.

“Volleyball,” Hinata exhales, snatching the ball and hugging it to his chest. Kageyama nods shortly. They gather their things to leave the gym with Hinata dragging his feet, and groaning, “Why are you so bad at talking about stuff?”

“Like you’re better— _gwaa, gyuh_!”

“You always know what I mean!”

“I had to learn to speak Hinata.”

He pouts, but as they depart the gym he at least feels like they’ve come to some kind of truce. They play together and Hinata doesn’t bring up the fact that Kageyama is wasting his life on economics. But that’s already hard to kick down, he just gets so indignant at the thought of someone else deciding that Kageyama isn’t good enough. The honor of defeating Kageyama belongs to _him_ and him alone, and it should only happen on the court.

* * *

When they show up to their first game, their opponents look surprised, and then they look pleased.

Kageyama and Hinata soon do away with those smug grins. Even Hinata’s receiving, a weak point of his, is excellent. They win both sets.

“Thank you for the game,” Hinata sings, as they stand along the net exchanging bows with their vanquished, stunned opponents. Kageyama’s traditional post-competition salutation is more of a mutter, his eyes on the floor.

They change in the locker room with their backs to one another, Hinata rocking back and forth on his heels in barely contained excitement. He’s missed this, so much, the game and Kageyama and the two in combination, since it only ever feels _this_ great when they’re together.

“That wasn’t bad at all, I think we’ve actually got a chance in the tournament.”

“They had no experience,” Kageyama replies, more sober. “The next team on our schedule has a couple names I recognize from the Spring High.”

Hinata deflates. It’s true, if the other team had been even slightly more able, they could well have overpowered the duo. They could really do with another player, even just one, to round out their weaknesses. There are going to be guys they’ve played against in the next match—where are the guys they played _with_? He tugs up his clean shorts. “Aren’t there any Karasuno people at Tohoku? They wouldn’t even need to practice with us, they could just be extra security.” Most of his friends attending university are doing so in Tokyo—Yamaguchi, Kenma-kun, Nishinoya-senpai. Hitoka-chan too, though she probably would’ve been too nervous to play.

Kageyama is quiet for a minute. Hinata hears the clank of his locker shutting and closes his own. “Sugawara is here.”

“Suga-san,” Hinata gasps, dropping his backpack. “He goes here! I ran into him last week.”

Kageyama turns to look at him, frowning. “And you didn’t think to ask him if he wanted to be on your intramural team?”

“No! I thought… of that…” Hinata turns red, and grabs his bag from the floor. Kageyama pulls the strap of his duffel over his shoulders and watches Hinata struggling to get his backpack on properly. “I just got really overwhelmed!” In truth he’d nearly run over Suga-san as he was leaving the student center and Suga was going in; and then he’d just been so flustered and excited to see his old senpai, everything else went out of his head. And _then_ he’d completely forgotten about the entire encounter.

“You get overwhelmed a lot,” says Kageyama, with something that might be a sly smile. It’s hard to tell what his mouth is doing a lot of the time.

“Shut up, jerk. Are you going to call Suga-san or not?”

“You didn’t get his number?”

“No, I was _overwhelmed_ —”

“I don’t have it.”

“Oh, that’s just great!” Hinata finally manages to get his backpack on like a normal person.  “Let’s go. What are we going to do?”

They start out of the locker room, passing their former opponents getting dressed. Neither Kageyama nor Hinata feels the six pairs of eyes following them down the aisle.

“I’ll email Takeda-sensei,” Kageyama says. “He might have some contact info for Sugawara-san.”

“That could take forever,” Hinata groans, shoving open the locker room door. They exit into the campus, buzzing with activity on a sunny April afternoon—people playing lawn games, reading on benches.

“Well, we wouldn’t have this problem if you had remembered to get his number.”

“I know he’s a Biology student,” Hinata offers—and his eyes go big. “What if we look up all the classes a third year Biology student has to take and find out when they are and wait around when the period ends?”

Kageyama puzzles over this for a moment. “That’s a good idea.”

* * *

“That was a terrible idea,” Suga tells them over lunch several days later, with a smile that hasn’t changed in two years. He sits across from them at an inexpensive ramen place, popular with Tohoku students. “How much time did you spend looking up that schedule? Take-chan is very prompt with his email.”

Hinata and Kageyama exchange an embarrassed look. Hinata shrugs and stuffs an egg into his mouth, deflecting.

Kageyama hasn’t touched his food, and he keeps tapping his chopsticks on the side of the bowl. “So will you join our team?” he asks intently. Hinata feels even more embarrassed, sinking a little in his chair. Kageyama really has no tact about these things, and judging from the way Suga’s smile wavers, they will need some tact to get this done. Which isn’t to say Hinata can do much better, but at least he has a _sense_ of the situation.

“I’m sorry, but no.”

Kageyama huffs and slumps in his seat, and Hinata groans, sticking his hands through his hair. “But Suga-san,” he pleads, “it would be like old times, and we really need a third guy.”

“What would you do with two setters?” Hinata is about to give a lengthy list of suggestions, but Suga waves him off. “I played on an intramural team my first year here, and it was fun and all, but I’m a third year now and the entrance exams for good medical schools take months of preparation. I don’t have time.”

“Suga-san,” Hinata mutters hopelessly. Kageyama appears to have given up and is glaring into his ramen, until his head snaps up.

“You don’t have to practice with us. You just have to be at games.”

Suga smiles at him, Hinata thinks mostly out of pity, and Hinata tries to catch Kageyama’s eye, shaking his head. Suga seems set and he doesn’t want to pester their senpai, but Kageyama doesn’t let up.

“Please, Suga-san, we need to win this tournament.”

Hinata’s embarrassment vanishes at the urgency in Kageyama’s voice. He’s clutching the edge of the table, clearly agitated, more than he ought to be. Suga tosses Hinata a little concerned look before continuing, in that soothing voice of his.

“I’m sure you’ll win. You’re both very good, and even better together.” Under the intensity of Kageyama’s stare, Suga shifts his gaze back to his meal, guiding a bite to his mouth and then talking around the food, which is somehow only cute when he does it. “I saw the Shiratorizawa game on television back in October. You’ve come a long way since we played together, you guys were incredible.”

“We lost,” says Kageyama. Some of his intensity fades and he sits back, glancing at the door.

“You still played—”

“It doesn’t matter how we played if we lost.”

“Don’t be rude, Kageyama,” Hinata snaps. And rude to Suga, sweet and caring and gentle Suga of all people, who seems remarkably poised despite the awkwardness. Kageyama gives Hinata a sideways look, then starts pawing through his things.

“I need to get to class. Sorry for wasting your time, Suga-san.” What is it lately with Kageyama and _wasting time_? He has only ever met Kageyama’s mother, and in passing at that. Kageyama-san, the elder, was always just a frightening presence on the fringes. It’s strange to consider the control he must exert over Kageyama, who Hinata knows so well.

Kageyama deposits the money for his meal on the table. “You haven’t eaten anything!”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Kageyama,” says Suga heavily, but he ignores the plea in Suga’s voice and zips out of the restaurant.

Once he’s gone, Hinata puts his head in his hands and lets out a wail that draws the eyes of a few nearby customers. Suga winces, patting his arm over the table.

“Suga-san, I am so sorry. He’s—he’s had a hard time.”

“I sensed that. Don’t worry about it.” There’s a pause where Hinata gives his lunch a stab, and then Suga speaks up again. “Shouyou… what is Kageyama doing at Tohoku? I thought…”

“Oh. So you knew about Tsukuba?”

Suga nods. “Ukai sent the VBC Alumni Association an email. I think he might’ve been drunk, since it’s the only email I’ve ever gotten from him, but he seemed thrilled. I thought Kageyama would be thrilled too.”

Hinata’s appetite has officially left the building, and with a sigh he rests his cheek against his fist. “I don’t think he would want me to tell you what happened.”

“Then you shouldn’t tell me,” says Suga decisively. Suga’s certainty soothes Hinata’s stomach, puts him at ease. Suga might only be a few years older, but Hinata takes his advice more seriously than the advice of most adults he knows. There’s something very precious about the designation _senpai_ that way, and the grey-haired boy sitting opposite him is the wisest one he has.

Suga waves someone down and orders them a pot of tea. It’s too hot to drink but Hinata tries anyway, yelping when he burns his tongue. Suga laughs, patiently observing the steam curling off his own cup.

“It’s nice that you and Kageyama have stayed so close.”

Hinata shrugs. They never made the choice to be close, or to stay that way, so he can’t qualify their relationship as _nice_. They fell into place and their places happened to be adjacent; it’s organic, anything else would be fighting the natural order of things. “Do you still talk to Dai-san and Asahi-san?”

The smile fades from Sugawara’s face and Hinata stops smiling too. He’s upset his senpai, oh, that’s— “I see Asahi whenever I go home. He’s working in town, but I think he’ll be an assistant coach at Karasuno next year.” That has Hinata smiling again, but it only lasts a moment: Suga squares his shoulders and clears his throat, eyes on his tea, and his insistence on acting as if this isn’t hard to talk about only makes him seem sadder. “Daichi is busy at university in Tokyo, though, you know. He doesn’t make it home very often. He’s doing well, I think.”

“I’m sorry, Suga-san,” says Hinata out the side of his mouth.

“Eh.” Suga brightens, smiling again. “It’s okay. That’s how things usually go. You and Kageyama are lucky. Now you never have to know what it’s like to be separated like that.”

“I guess,” Hinata mutters. He’s thinking about Kageyama’s cold shoulder through their last semester at Karasuno; about their first two weeks at Tohoku, not even knowing he was here. _It’s nice that you and Kageyama have stayed so close._ Yeah, right.

“It’s precious,” says Suga, looking off absently like maybe he isn’t talking about Hinata and Kageyama at all. “University is all self-discovery. You two get to do that together. That… well, it’s precious. I envy you.” Hinata’s nose wrinkles—envy? Suga catches himself and laughs. “Am I going on too much? You’re supposed to stop me when I get sappy.”

Hinata shakes his head. His tea is finally cool enough to drink, and the warm drink coats his throat. “I think you’re probably right.”

They pay for their meal and the tea and on the way out, Suga pauses to say goodbye. “You know, a flatmate of mine has a birthday next weekend. We’re having a party. You and Kageyama ought to come!”

“Yes,” says Hinata immediately, because he loves parties—he loves the colors and the pounding music and the dancing. It isn’t until he has Suga’s number in his phone and he’s bouncing off to class that he realizes, he and Kageyama—they haven’t done anything social together since they met up again, only volleyball-related activities. Will Kageyama even want to go to a party with him? Kageyama is bad at parties. This is a historical, proven fact. And Hinata still doesn’t know what the two of them are, nowadays. _Whatever_ , he thinks. _If not, I’ll go on my own_. Make some new friends, ones that will stay with him even if he loses in volleyball.

* * *

“A party? Why would we do that?”

Hinata turns just enough to pull a face at him without stopping his jog. Running has become a normal fixture of their morning routine: meet at half past six in the gym, practice for an hour, thirty minutes of laps around the athletic facility, then baths in the locker room and a quick breakfast before their nine o’clock classes. They’ve done this everyday for the past week, even Saturday and Sunday, and Hinata feels like sunshine despite the questions clouding his and Kageyama’s friendship lately.

“Parties are for fun,” he explains, “Like—you know, fun, that thing normal people enjoy having?” Kageyama, red from either the cardio or the embarrassment, shoves him and he has to scramble to catch up. Their shoes slap rhythmically against the concrete, Sendai’s famous trees shading the path from the sun’s glare.

“I don’t see why we can’t just like, hang out at my apartment or something.”

Hinata nearly trips again. “We could? You mean it?”

Kageyama eyes him, then mops some sweat on his sleeve. “What? We used to hang out a lot, is that weird now?”

“ _Is it_?” Hinata demands, bewildered. Kageyama glares in confusion and jogs ahead of him. So much for being in sync, neither of them has any clue what’s going on. “I want to go to the party,” he cries at Kageyama’s back, then kicks it up a gear to catch up. “I’ll go on my own if you don’t want to!”

“No, I’ll—I’ll come for a little while, fine.”

“Yeah,” Hinata sniffs. “And we can hang out at your place some other time.”

“Sure,” says Kageyama, still red, with his gaze set on the path in front of them.

They have a game in the afternoon, before Suga’s party that night. Truthfully, Hinata doesn’t recognize the guys Kageyama said they met at the Spring High, but they play like they could’ve made it. They go down in the first set, 20-25, and he and Kageyama strategize during the break, with Kageyama sitting cross-legged and Hinata standing to the side.

“They’re underestimating our endurance,” Kageyama explains, scribbling out a play in his notebook. “They’ve got a lot of power but they’re too lazy to move for a tough receive.”

A bead of sweat finds Hinata’s eye as he’s looking down and he hisses, rubbing at it. He tugs up the neck of his t-shirt to wipe his face, exposing the slick plane of his stomach and hips, where his shorts are riding down a little.

“So we’ve got to use our speed and feints, more feints and targeting…”

He nods, still face-to-shirt. The cool air of the gym feels good on his abdomen and up his chest. He’s comfortable until he realizes Kageyama has stopped talking. He pops his head back out of his shirt just in time to catch his friend’s dark head of hair snapping away, like he'd been looking at... Kageyama is assessing at the other team with a pinched expression.

Hinata squints down at him. “What?” 

Kageyama swallows, the muscles of his throat shifting. He doesn’t meet Hinata’s eye. “Nothing. I was just waiting for you to finish.”

“Wiping my face?”

“Yeah.”

“I was listening—”

“Do you want to hear the rest of the plan?” asks Kageyama harshly, jamming his pen against his notebook, still refusing to look up. He’s… strange, and the moment is strange, and Hinata gets a weird knot in his stomach. He decides he doesn’t want to understand it, it’s too big and confusing and Kageyama just—confuses him. That way. He drops to his knees, so they’re sitting together.

“I’m listening.”

Kageyama’s plan works, and they take the next two sets, scoring off a series of spikes just inside the net, quicks, dump shots, feints, and then scoring more when their disconcerted opponents start making errors.

In the locker room, Kageyama doesn’t seem to have recovered from his earlier weirdness. They undress for the baths, except that he drops his bag upside down and has to repack everything while in his underwear, with Hinata looking on in a towel, tapping his foot. To compensate, Hinata starts talking—to Kageyama but mostly to himself—about the game, what kind of music they’ll play at the party, whether or not Suga might’ve invited any of their other senpai into Sendai for the night, if they’ll be offered alcohol.

This last thing was never really an if; they haven’t even been at Sugawara-san’s house for half a minute when a wordless guy hands them drinks and walks off.

Kageyama scowls into his cup and then into Hinata’s. “What’s in this? What’s in yours?” He starts sniffing the liquid and tries to lean over to do the same to Hinata’s, but Hinata pushes him away.

“It’s a drink, stupid. Like liquor.”

“We’re minors,” says Kageyama, very seriously.

“Oh, you're eighteen, are you scared—” Kageyama shoves the cup to his lips and takes two enormous gulps. Hinata cackles.  


“I don’t know any of these people,” Kageyama mutters as they start navigating deeper into the house, which seems too small to accommodate the number of attendees but big enough to get lost in. They look like mostly second and third years to Hinata, maybe older. He sips at his own drink. It tastes sickly sweet, like fruit punch, but he likes that. He can’t even taste the alcohol.

“Maybe we can meet some new people!”

“Why?”

Hinata tosses a glare back at Kageyama over his shoulder. They’ve made it through a long front hallway into an open space. “There’s Suga-san,” Hinata gasps. He waves enthusiastically at the third year, leaning against a wall on the far side of the room, talking to a dark-haired guy who Hinata thinks looks twenty-five, even though he’s probably just a fourth year. Suga spots him and grins, partly because of the waving and because he’s started jumping up and down, and maybe also because his hair is hard to miss.

“How are we supposed to get over there to say hello to him?” says Kageyama, standing just behind him, having to raise his voice over the music. His breath tickles the shell of Hinata’s ear.

He’s right, though. Traversing the crowd of people between them and Suga isn’t an inviting prospect, not when it’s already sticky hot and there are only more people packed together in the center of the room, some of them dancing. “We can say hi later, maybe?” He eyes the dancers enviously—a practice, a run, and a game already today and he still wants to move. He tries to finish as much of his drink as he can, talking around the rim. “I’m gonna go dance. Come on.”

“Oh,” he hears Kageyama say behind him, before dashing into the sea of people. He doesn’t check to see if his companion follows, and when he eventually turns around, Kageyama isn’t there.

That’s the last they see of each other for a couple hours, it turns out. He dances by himself for a while and makes a friend whose name he can’t hear, gets handed another couple drinks until he thinks he can do anything.

At one point he looks over and sees Suga again. Or, most of Suga. His face is obscured by a head of dark hair belonging to the older guy from earlier, and Hinata realizes—the back of his neck suddenly burning—they’re kissing. Like a full-on, passionate, messy, romantic kiss, the kind that always makes him blush during sex scenes in movies. Suga is kissing that guy, and Hinata’s limbs have stopped moving, he stands there getting knocked around by dancers and just staring and gaping, until someone slams into him hard enough he’s snapped out of it.

The room now oppressively hot, he gasps for air and shoves his way through the crowd, heading for a sliding door that must go outside. He gets squished into the wall twice, but eventually he reaches the door and slides it open enough to squeeze through.

Hinata almost falls to his knees on the patio as he’s ejected from the party and into the cool night air. He manages to pull the door closed behind him, and he leans against it, catching his breath. The film of sweat on his skin turns cold and makes him shiver. The yard is a good size for the city, with high fences and a lot of trash from the party, crushed cups and cans. From a balcony upstairs he can hear more music and voices raised above it.

Suga kissed that guy. It’s all Hinata can see and think of, kissing, kissing boys. It’s like learning about gravity—he had never thought to consider something that now seems obvious. He’s discovered a new law of physics: boys can be kissed. In his own life. It's not just politics, a phenomenon you hear about on television. His ears are ringing.

“Hinata.”

He lifts his head to see Kageyama coming out from beyond the side of the house, as though he was hiding. He’s clearly been sweating too, and his bangs look mussed and sticky. In the low light of the yard, his eyes could be black. Hinata thinks about kissing boys.

“Did you get tired of dancing?”

Hinata hasn’t managed to close his mouth in several minutes, and he can only shake his head up at Kageyama, who gives him a grimace, or maybe that’s a smile, as always it’s hard to tell.

“You can’t sit in front of the door like that. You’re going to get trampled.” So he gently lifts Hinata under the arms and drags him a few feet away, and then sits down beside him. Hinata thinks of kissing boys, of kissing every boy he’s ever met, all his childhood friends and everyone at Karasuno and his roommates and his classmates and strangers on the street—and he thinks of kissing Kageyama. That shuts Hinata’s mouth finally, and fast. “God, you’re red in the face,” says Kageyama. “Are you overheating?”

“I saw…” Sitting cross-legged, Hinata clutches his ankles. “Suga-san was kissing that guy.”

Kageyama glances over his shoulder, at the door back into the party. His expression doesn’t even change. “So?”

“Did you know—that Suga-san is…”

“Gay?” He looks back at Hinata, still unmoved but now with a judgmental eyebrow quirked. “No. But it’s not really surprising, is it?”

“Not surprising!” Hinata twists to face him, aghast. “I never even thought of it.”

“Never thought Suga was gay? That’s not—”

“No, I never thought of _being gay_.”

Kageyama squints at him. He has a weird face on, but Hinata suspects he probably looks strange too—bewildered and excited and terrified. “Are you saying you didn’t know guys could like guys?”

“ _No_ , not—”

“Are you a homophobe, Hinata?” Kageyama demands, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I—am _not_ —” Hinata hiccups violently. “ _A homophobe_!” Another hiccup. Oh no. He’s gotten so worked up, he gave himself the hiccups. Again.

Kageyama is laughing at his expense, face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Hinata slaps at his arm pathetically, the hiccups wracking his body every other second. This is the most he’s heard Kageyama laugh in ages, even if it’s more of a low snicker.

“Kageyam—” Hiccup. “—ah! Are _you_ —” Hiccup. “—a homo—” Hiccup. “— _phobe_!” He shouts the last syllable, to try and get across some of the intensity lost to his hiccuping.

“You really are a dumbass,” Kageyama snorts, easily batting away his attacks. Hinata sits back, defeated and hiccuping miserably. He pouts at the high fence, at the moon hanging in the dark sky, and blames them when he hiccups so hard his chest actually hurts.

There’s a flash of movement out the corner of his eye, and Kageyama has leaned over to peck him on the lips.

He almost screams.

In fact, he opens his mouth to do just that, but no sound comes out. Later on he thinks it was a good thing, the not-screaming, and also that the punch he instinctively swings doesn’t land, because Kageyama looks embarrassed enough at his reaction—he’s flushed and glaring, scrambling to escape the range of Hinata’s strike.

“The fuck—I was trying to _scare the hiccups out of you_ , dumbass!”

Oh. The tips of Hinata’s ears burn.

“I—it was a joke?”

“Yeah,” he spits, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, still with that glare. “A joke.”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t want to hit you!”

“Sure.”

His mouth feels all weird and tingly, even though it was truly a peck, the kind of kiss between aunts, only he’s consumed with thoughts of kissing boys and Kageyama… it would’ve been a _mean_ joke, if Kageyama had known. But judging from the way he’s scowling at his shoes and trying to brush dirt off his pants, he had no idea what he was doing. He takes a deep breath, and then realizes. “Hey, my hiccups are gone!”

“You’re welcome,” Kageyama grunts. He starts getting to his feet. It seems like every time Hinata thinks things between them are improving, or that they’re back to where they were, another complication arises. “Tell me you’re done with this party.”

He nods, and clambers up, the concrete scraping his palms. “I’m definitely done with this party.”

* * *

Hinata shows up to the athletic center for their third game of the season with a spring in his step. Not for any particular reason, except that it’s almost summer, and he got a good grade back in one of his classes, and he’s on his way to play volleyball, the greatest sport known to man.

He has his hand on the door and is about to pull it open when he hears Kageyama’s voice, from not far off—yeah, he’s standing ten meters away, talking into the driver’s window of a white sedan. Hinata can’t make out whoever is inside or hear what they’re saying, but Kageyama braces himself against the car and speaks just loud enough to be heard. There’s an edge in his voice, and Hinata wouldn’t want to be on the other end of the look he’s giving the driver. “Yes, I know… it isn’t like that… I swear… I’ve got to go.” At which point he launches off the car, and turns to storm into the building, until his eyes meet Hinata’s. The white car zips off behind him, and Kageyama sighs as if to say, _oh, great, you saw that_.

“Who was that?” Hinata asks, holding the door for his teammate and trying not to look too sheepish.

“My dad.” Of course. It takes a special foe to get that look out of Kageyama. Hinata’s only seen it a few times before, in their encounters with Oikawa-san. “My mom told him about the intramural league and he came down to make sure I wasn’t letting it get in the way of my studies.”

“Oh.” As they march for the locker room, with Hinata struggling to match the length of Kageyama’s stride, he notices his friend’s hands—trembling, in fists at his sides as the darkness in his expression shows no signs of waning. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay to play?”

“I’m fine,” he insists, kicking open the locker room door.

He’s not fine, it turns out.

“ _That was in_!” he shouts at the ref in the middle of their (losing) second set. “ _On the line_!”

“It wasn’t!” Hinata calls, as Kageyama has started advancing toward the (terrified) referee with murder in his eyes. Hinata has been preparing to step between Kageyama and a victim since his teammate flubbed three serves in a row, then failed to get a dump shot over the net.

“Do you have eyes!” Kageyama keeps shouting. “That was clearly in, fucking—” The other team watches them, stock still, with the kind of silence reserved for observing tragedies.

He grabs the back of Kageyama’s shirt to keep him from going any further. “It was out, Kageyama!”

“No!”

Hinata jerks his shirt, hard enough that he wheels around, and they look at each other. “It was out,” Hinata repeats softly.

Kageyama stares at him. He shakes his head, and drags in a few deep breaths. “Should we forfeit?” he asks, quiet enough that the others can’t hear.

“No.” Hinata releases his shirt, and trots back to his position on the court. “We don’t quit.”

Kageyama returns to the game more focused, but they can’t make it out of the hole and lose both sets to a moderately good team. Hinata doesn’t sweat it, because they’re still 2-1 and there are five regular season games to polish their play before the tournament, which is what really matters.

But the loss only adds an extra damper to Kageyama’s already difficult day. When they get back to the locker room, he gets his shirt halfway off before parking his ass on a bench and just… sitting there, the shirt around his neck, a complicated thing happening behind his eyes. Hinata has a sixth sense that he shouldn’t say anything—the last time he tried to pry an explanation out of his friend, he got nothing, and Kageyama came to him later when he was ready to talk. He’s learned something, evolved: when Kageyama needs to talk, he’ll find you. It’s just a matter of time. So Hinata has his bath alone and gets dressed and goes home for the night.

His phone rings at eleven, just as he’s drifting off into sleep.

_Kageyama Tobio calling._

“Hi.”

“Hinata.”

“What is it?”

His question is met with shallow breathing, and a crackle that might be the phone shifting. It’s late and quiet and dark in Hinata’s room. He pulls the covers up to his chin.

“Kageyama-kun.”

“I don’t know.” A sigh. Hinata’s stomach feels weird, kind of light and airy. “I want to talk to someone. All my roommates are asleep, and I wouldn’t talk to them anyway. So... I guess I don’t want to talk to someone. I want to talk to you.”

“Okay.” Another long silence. Hinata rubs his stomach. The clock on his desk reads 23:06. “What are we going to talk about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know _anything_?”

“No, I—hey.”

Hinata giggles sleepily. “You act so scary but you’re a real dork, Kageyama-kun.”

“You think I act scary?”

“You yelled at the ref today.”

He hears his friend exhale on the other end of the line. “I like studying economics, you know. It’s like math but better... not pointless. You understand why it matters.”

Hinata can’t tell if this non-sequitur is an excuse, or if it’s genuine, and so he doesn’t quite know how to respond. He wants to say the right thing, the good friend thing, the thing that Nishinoya-senpai would say roughly and Suga-san in a more eloquent tone; but it’s hard when every option has two sides, guidance versus control, practical versus passionate. “But economics...” He squirms in the bed, kicking the blankets down from his chest. “Is that what you want?”

“What I want?” Kageyama scoffs. “I don’t know, how am I supposed to know that? Why does everyone expect me to know what I want? I’m eighteen, everyone always talks about figuring yourself out at university, and then they ask for—your stupid—I don’t know!” Hinata’s lips have parted of their own accord, and he lies staring up at the ceiling, listening to his rant. “I can’t see the future. I don’t know what I’m going to like in twenty years. That’s longer than I’ve been alive.”

“Do you... think you’ll still like volleyball?”

For a second it’s quiet, and he thinks, _oh, no, why did I say that?_ And he wants to sink into the floor. But then Kageyama speaks, and he doesn’t sound mad. He doesn’t sound happy, either, but not mad, just... veiled. Like Hinata needs a clue to unlock the statement. “Not everything is about volleyball, Hinata.”

“So are we not friends just because of volleyball?”

“What? What does that mean?”

“Well...” His heart thuds into his throat. It’s not scary, Kageyama isn’t scary, Kageyama is just his friend. And Hinata is supposed to be the one who’s good at talking. “When we lost to Shiratori, you stopped talking to me. And then you didn’t tell me you were at Tohoku, I only found out because of intramurals.”

Kageyama makes a funny sound, like he’s gritting his teeth, and maybe banging the heel of his hand against his forehead. “That’s not why I did that.”

“Why you did... what?”

“It wasn’t volleyball. It was other things.”

“Things about me?”

Hinata waits. Silence. Another question Kageyama isn’t ready to answer yet, he supposes, but it makes him anxious to think there’s something to do with _him_ tied up in this.

“I just thought maybe,” Hinata mumbles, “since we weren’t always friends, that once we weren’t on the same team anymore, we would stop.”

“Stop.”

“Being friends...”

Kageyama makes a tiny sound, a _hmph_. “Do you still want to beat me?”

“Huh?”

“When we were first years, you said we couldn’t lose because you were the only person who was allowed to beat me. Do you still feel that way?”

“No. Kind of,” Hinata says, cracking a grin. That’s a funny thing to remember.

“Kind of!”

“Sometimes when you’re being really dense.” Hinata shakes his head at the little offended grunt on the other end of the line. “No, I don’t want to beat you anymore.”

“So yeah, then,” Kageyama says simply, “Things aren’t like they used to be.”

A car passes outside Hinata’s window, and he watches the headlights swipe over the white walls of his room, glinting against the posters and old photographs.

“You’re lucky to know what you want,” Kageyama sighs.

Hinata taps his chin. He thinks of that party, of boys kissing, thoughts that have trailed him stubbornly for a week. He lost track in class the other day because he couldn’t stop contemplating what it’d be like to snog the guy in the front row. “I don’t know everything I want.”

“Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

“Yes!”

“Pretty bad.”

“Well, you have a _bad_ attitude,” he says. Kageyama snorts. It’s not a very good comeback.

They talk for a while longer and Hinata doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he wakes up at six with his phone sandwiched between his face and the pillow. _Call Duration: 4 hours 23 minutes_. Which means the call ended around three-thirty in the morning, but he knows he couldn’t have stayed awake that long. Evidently they had fallen asleep with the line still open, and he bumped the end call button in his sleep. Four and a half hours... he’s going to get an earful when his mom sees the phone bill.

* * *

That isn’t the last of the late night phone calls—two or three nights a week, at first, and then more frequently. It gets to the point where Hinata can’t nod off without the warm weight of the phone against his cheek and Kageyama’s voice in his ear, and after that they talk every night. Sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes for an hour, sometimes they do what they did the first night and continue until the call becomes a sleepover. Once he wakes up and the line is still open, and he can hear a gentle snore. Once he calls at eleven and neither of them speaks, they just leave the line on and he drifts off to the sound of easy breathing. He persuades his mom that they ought to get a mobile plan with unlimited minutes.

They don’t discuss their little ritual when they’re together in person. The conversations are nothing. They’re infrequently deep and even when the two of them fall into serious talk, mocking is inevitable. Sometimes Kageyama will complain about his dad. Sometimes Hinata will hint at his boy-kissing concerns, sometimes Kageyama will hint at a topic Hinata can’t identify, which makes his stomach hurt. But it’s not the content of their exchanges that matters, just the fact of the exchanges themselves. It doesn’t matter what they say as long as they’re talking.  

They play a game a week and Hinata starts using them to tell time. Game four, a win, sees them halfway through May, seven weeks into the semester. Game five, week eight, their second loss, to the only team who’s come close to matching their seriousness. Hinata has a fever for game six and, while he _totally could have played_ , Kageyama calls in a forfeit before they even get to the gym. Games seven and eight are wins, too, and they arrive at mid-June. The tournament is the weekend after Hinata’s birthday, and he turns down Suga’s offer to throw a party, only pausing their intense training long enough to tease Kageyama about being his _elder_.

There are sixteen teams in the league including themselves, and Hinata and Kageyama have played eight. They scout the other seven, showing up early or hanging out after their matches have completed. One team, with six guys all at least 180 cm, seems like their biggest competitor: they’re fast and naturally athletic, and motivated.

“There’s something strange about their play,” Kageyama says, frowning. They’re watching the tall team finish up a second set, winning 23-14. Hinata brought his soda from lunch and chews on the straw.

“Yeah, they’re basketball players!” Kageyama eyes him, and he points to their setter. “You can tell by the way they hit the ball. It’s like, _haaa, whooop_.” He raises his arms over his head, and slacks his wrists so his hands hang forward, almost dumping soda on himself. He’s seen Izumi do it dozens of times.

“Hm,” says Kageyama. He watches the gesture, then looks back out at the court thoughtfully. “It’s like a jump shot. And they chase the ball, too. They don’t get under it.”

“Is that helpful?” Hinata inquires, pleased to see that Kageyama is writing all this down.

“I think so.”

There are four rounds to the tournament, taking place over two weeks: the first round and the quarterfinal one Saturday, the semis and then the final the next Saturday. The first Saturday passes without incident. They get paired up against a team of engineering students who seem like they might be doing this as a punishment, and in the quarterfinals, it’s that team from the second game they played—talented but lazy—and in true lazy form, they haven’t worked out a solution to Kageyama’s strategy. To celebrate the wins, Kageyama cooks an inadvisable amount of rice in his apartment and they eat every grain.

The second Saturday is different. Hinata invites Suga-san, naturally, but he doesn’t show up alone.

“TANAKA-SENPAI! ASAHI-SAN!”

He tries to tackle them both at once and fails, considering that Tanaka chest bumps him hard, both of them hollering wildly. Asahi has to dodge them and Suga almost falls over laughing—everyone in the gym is staring, including Kageyama. He doesn’t run to greet their former senpai, but sidles over after Hinata has recovered his balance. Hinata almost apologizes for his shyness, except that Tanaka has no time for shyness and hugs Kageyama tightly.

“Holy shit, Hinata,” says Tanaka, once all the yelling and hugging dies down. “How do you look so much older but still so tiny?” He ruffles his blushing former kouhai’s hair, and Hinata tries to play it cool, because he thinks that’s the older-seeming thing to do.

“Ukai wouldn’t give Tanaka-san time off at the store until we told him we were coming to see you play,” Asahi explains happily. “But then he was all for it.”

“Christ, it’s been almost a year since we saw you guys. Oh,” Tanaka starts digging in his pocket. “Noya-san sent me a message for you. He’s at some fancy tournament this weekend. There’s a shit load of exclamation points in this, by the way.” He reads from his phone: “Tell them good luck in their match. Tell Kageyama to stop with that face.” Tanaka looks up from his phone and chuckles, “Oi, yeah, that's the face!”

Kageyama keeps on frowning and hugging a ball to his chest like his security blanket. Tanaka and Suga and Asahi are all giggling, and Hinata giggles too—he catches Kageyama’s eye and can’t stop. The corners of Kageyama’s mouth turn up. His shoulders relax. 

The ref blows a whistle, which means they’re getting ready to start. As he and Kageyama are trotting off, he hears Asahi say, “I think you’re right, Suga-san!” Hinata half-turns around to ask what he’s talking about, but Kageyama gets a hold of his shirt and drags him toward the court.

The first game isn’t a problem. They haven’t played the team before, but they came out of the easiest bracket, and have no clue what to do with the machine before them.

The second game, the final, comes after a short break in which they socialize with their small (but noisy) fan club, and then they’re up against—the basketball players. They’re as challenging as they looked in the match from a few weeks back.

“Okay,” murmurs Kageyama, in their two-man huddle. “We’ll start with the first strategy, and I’ll signal you to switch to the second when we’re ready.” Hinata nods. They’ve gone over it more than enough for him to feel confident in the execution.

As the first set nears its conclusion, and they’re down 22-17, that confidence starts to wane. Not much, because he’s Hinata Shouyou and confidence is a forte of his; but he gets more anxious when he sees Kageyama to his right, and the fear creeping into his eyes, losing control. The next few points slip away. 23-17. 24-17 and they’re set point. _This was stupid_ , he realizes, watching the way Kageyama’s face struggles to focus on the opposing team’s server. It was stupid to put all their expectations on this dumb tournament, to act like winning would erase their loss from October. There are no scouts from Tsukuba in the stands, only their old friends who will love them no matter the outcome; there’s no trip to Tokyo to fill the Small Giant’s shoes that comes with victory. They are breaking their backs and their heads to win a gift card to the school bookstore, and it’s fine for Shouyou who just works that way, but for Kageyama—who’s trying to unlearn loving this one thing and just this one thing—it’s catastrophic to care too much.

The serve whizzes by Kageyama’s ear. He doesn’t move. It slams down just inside the line, set point, 25-17.

The teams break. Kageyama still doesn’t move. He’s staring through the net, at the furthest outside line. Hinata waves to their senpais, and then takes his teammate by the wrist and leads him into the locker room.

Kageyama sits down hard on the first bench they reach, but Hinata can’t bring himself to stop moving, so he just bounces in place and then paces.

“Our strategy isn’t working,” Kageyama manages. It sounds like there’s something lodged in his throat.

“That’s not completely true. We got a lot of points on them, it was close.”

“I don’t have any more ideas.”

“That’s okay.” Hinata swallows. He tries to hold still. “It’s okay if we can’t beat them. We… don’t need to win.” That sentence, he never thought he would ever feel it on his tongue. “There are six people on a volleyball team. The odds were always against us.”

Kageyama looks up at him. The fear on his face is plain to see, and Hinata understands that it’s not fear of losing a volleyball game, not really. It’s the fear of losing at _volleyball_ —of not being good enough. A very understandable fear, and Hinata’s chest aches to see the torture in the way his friend grips his knees and squeezes his eyes shut, as though he’s trying to convince himself that ghosts aren’t real, and there’s no reason to be scared of the dark.

Hinata helps him up, and they return to the court with their arms brushing. Tanaka gives a whoop and Suga applauds. All three of their senpais clap for every play in the second set, as the score gets away from Karasuno’s former powerhouse, and their opponent’s lead opens up. Toward the end, Kageyama’s frustration and misery are so obvious that Hinata thinks the other team starts flubbing serves on purpose, just so the two of them won’t go down by ten points. Hinata hates that. It’s not a feeling he feels often, hate, but the surge here is definite, because how dare they condescend Kageyama like that. Letting him win like a fucking child. Kageyama has more talent in his pinky than they’ve got in their big basketball-playing bodies combined, and Hinata scores a couple of fast, very legitimate points on them in his rage.

But he’s relieved when the last point is won. He doesn’t look at the scoreboard, just waits to hear the whistle blown, and lets his eyes close. That’s new, being so content with failure. It hurts, but a livable pain.

When they line up, Kageyama doesn’t open his mouth to offer a _thank you for the game_. His post-game bow is more of a tilt forward, head hanging. Hinata can’t stop watching him, his every move, insides churning.

Suga, Tanaka and Asahi come over as they’re packing up their stuff. No locker room today, it seems like.

“That was a tough game,” Suga offers gently. He’s also watching Kageyama, and then he pats Hinata on the shoulder.

“Damn straight,” Tanaka agrees, glaring over at the basketball team. “Those fuckers. They’re on the wrong court.” Asahi gives Hinata a smile and a bow—one ace to another, respectful.

“Thank you for coming out to watch,” he manages. They all nod.

There’s a flash of black in the corner of Hinata’s eye: wordlessly, without acknowledging their senpais, Kageyama has started to walk out. He hasn’t even changed his shoes.

“Kageyama-kun!” he calls after, but there’s not a pause in his friend’s stride. He tosses Suga a panicked look. “I—”

“Go,” says Tanaka, jerking a thumb toward the exit. Asahi and Suga shoo him onward.

“I’m sorry! I’ll see you later!”

Kageyama gets out of the gym before Hinata can catch up with him. Coming into the hallway, he sees through the windows that it’s fallen dark outside. Their matches went on much longer than he’d realized.

He spies the back of Kageyama’s jacket disappearing around a corner at the end of the corridor, and sprints after him. His hand closes around the loose fabric of his friend’s sleeve.

“Kageyama!”

The taller boy wheels around, shaking him off. His eyes are wet and he looks like he could take some of his rage out on Hinata. He _is_ scary, even if he doesn’t realize it, but Hinata finds himself more concerned than frightened.

“What?”

“Don’t just run off.”

“Why? Why shouldn’t I run off, the game is done, we lost.”

He tries to keep going down the hall, but Hinata grabs his sleeve again.

“You can’t go,” he pleads. “We have to do our thing.”

“Our thing?”

“The thing we do when we lose.” They are starting to catch their breath, and Kageyama’s face opens under the realization. “We have to do it. It’s tradition.”

Kageyama glances down the hall toward the door, where streetlamps are glowing through the narrow windows. He must be thinking something and Hinata has an instantaneous, passionate longing to hear what it is, but Kageyama turns back to him before he can put his arms around his friend’s neck and beg to know.

“Where are we going to go?”

“I have an idea.”

* * *

He’s not sure if it’s leftover tournament nerves or the strong scent of chlorine, but Hinata feels awake to the point of tingling when he pushes open the door to the athletic center’s pool complex, Kageyama right behind him.

The Olympic-sized pool spans the length of the cavernous room, and the only lights on are in the water, so a turquoise glow writhes over every surface: the walls and floor, their own skin. “You’re blue,” he tells Kageyama, grinning. His friend peers down at him, the trembling waves of the pool’s water reflected on his face. There’s a furrow between his brows but otherwise his expression is inscrutable.

“So are you.”

Hinata keeps grinning, though it’s more nervous-energetic than a legitimate expression of joy. “Are you ready?”

Kageyama silently moves away and slips his bag off his shoulder, tossing it into the bleachers; Hinata follows his lead and loses his backpack. They kick off their game shoes and the kneepads around their ankles, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder on the pool’s edge, even breathing in tandem. Hinata sways to the distant electric hum of the pump system and the water’s rhythmic lapping. His eyes fall closed, but the glow off the pool shines through his eyelids, turning the inside of his vision blue.

“It says no running,” Kageyama murmurs. Hinata only shakes his head; even with eyes shut he senses his teammate unwinding beside him, opening up, preparing to let go.

Hinata opens his mouth and draws in a deep breath and he can hear, feel Kageyama do the same, and the screams come kicking out their chests.

He opens his eyes enough to watch his bare feet slamming against the poolside tile, running nowhere and everywhere his legs can take him, up the bleachers and down again, banging his heels against the hollow metal in time with his shouts. He loses his sense of Kageyama but for the echoing of their synchronized screams off the impossibly tall ceiling.

It’s different, this time; they’re screaming not just frustration but confusion. Hinata screams because there are questions he has about himself that only he can answer, because his friend is hurting and he doesn’t know what he can say to make it better. He screams because it is all so _unfair_ —that Kageyama should suffer, that his talent should go to waste, that Hinata should feel so close to him but still too distant to do any good. In the minutes that stream by as they’re screaming confusion, he ticks nearer to maturity, though not into it. He’s grown from screaming about not getting what he wants to screaming about not knowing what he wants. The growing pains leave his spent lungs shaking.  


His furious steps eventually stall and he falls on one knee, then to the other, right at the pool’s lip. The moving surface of the water obscures his reflection, but he could almost swear he’s unrecognizable anyway, that the definition in his jaw and the width of his shoulders and the shagginess of his hair belong to someone else, an older person, a grown man. That’s not him, not now—not a man, not yet. Wouldn’t a man known himself better than this? _  
_

He’s fallen quiet but screams still scrape the room’s huge walls, with their banners and photographs of past accolades. He tears his eyes from the water and sees Kageyama’s dark figure on the opposite side. Stuck in place, fists shaking at his sides, head back and throat flinching with the strain of wail after wail. He must feel Hinata’s eyes on him, because the last scream dies in his mouth as he turns, lips still parted, to meet his gaze. On all fours with his chest heaving, staring at the most important friend he’s ever had, Hinata has the overpowering sense that every meagre barrier ever made exigent between himself and Kageyama dissolves and, in this most primal of states, their connection is palpable. He could reach out and touch the air over the water and feel heat; the strength of the feeling and emotion and uncertain desire barreling from the thudding center of his chest to Kageyama’s shaking torso. The corners of Hinata’s mouth creep upward. He remembers, almost laughing. _Of course it’s you._ The answer to the question of what he wants. _You’re the person who changes everything, now as ever._  

With the heightened intensity of connection they move forward at the same time: Hinata plunges head-first into the pool, Kageyama takes a long stride over the edge and sinks into the water.

Hinata stays under longer than he means to, watching his shorts billow around his thighs, and swimming toward the still figure of Kageyama, whose hair fans beautifully in the water. He comes up when he sees Kageyama push for the surface, and sucks in a few breaths of good, clean air. Kageyama hauls himself up on side of the pool, and sits watching Hinata, who lets himself float for a moment. He peers at the metal lacing of the ceiling, squiggles of blue light, lets his limbs go heavy in the water. The pool must be heated, but it feels cool on his skin that’s burning with enlightenment. He paddles to the edge and climbs out, but slowly, grinning at the way Kageyama follows the movement.

They’re both soaked in their clothes and leave puddles where they sit staring at one another. It reminds him of October, getting drenched with rain on that pebbly bank back home, and he’s astonished to think it hasn’t even been a year—he feels so fundamentally altered, larger, and the two of them are more naked now. The white of Kageyama’s shirt clings to his torso, twisted around the lean toned curve of his bicep. He hasn’t always been so broad-chested, surely, but with every otherwise hidden muscle extra-defined by his wet clothes, you can see just how much power he might possess.

Hinata crawls closer and folds his legs beneath him, and Kageyama ducks his head and blushes. Powerful he may be, but he’s forever awkward about these delicate things. It makes Hinata smile.

“Are you upset?” His voice comes out hoarse from all the screaming. Kageyama stares at the circle formed by water dripping off the front of his hair.

“Yes.”

“You were trying to prove something.” Kageyama flinches, but Hinata presses on, “But you don’t need to. Half of being able to do something is wanting it enough to try. Avid pursuit…” Is this unlike every missed swing, every imperfect serve? Life is no different than volleyball. “Just because you failed today—that doesn’t mean you’re always going to fail. You can get back up.”

Kageyama’s lips twitch upward. “Are you my guru now?” Hinata smiles back.

“I know we used to talk about winning all the time, and we were going to make each other the strongest.” In some ways, they’d done just that. Certainly there’s something in Hinata that’s made of steel, something he wouldn’t have but for the force of Kageyama in his life. He sighs and, still with a smile, glances out over the blue plane. “But as long as you’re with me, you don’t have to be invincible.”  


Hands snake forward and take his arms and he’s pulled tight against his friend, into a trembling hug, and he hugs back, matching every ounce of Kageyama’s desperation with reassurance. His breath stalls in his lungs, and not because of the crushing embrace—it’s the sensation of Kageyama’s face pressed into his neck and the hands grabbing loosely at the back of his shirt, the water on his skin mixing with the water on his friend’s, a sliver of black hair clinging to his lower lip—every sense devoted to the feeling of that moment, not a shred of him can summon the energy necessary to draw breath. He shuts his eyes and buries his face in wet, hot shoulder, almost swearing when a muscle shifts under his cheek.

Kageyama releases him enough that they can pull apart and see one another; swallowing hard, he slides a careful, huge hand up Hinata’s neck to cradle his cheek. Their faces hover inches apart, Hinata’s instinctively straining closer to Kageyama’s, clean-shaven and split open with thrilled apprehension, and glowing that gorgeous blue in the pool’s light. Hinata’s fists find the collar of his shirt and he climbs up, near as he can get to that inviting mouth, with his wet knees sliding on the tile between Kageyama’s thighs. It’s funny how often he’s thought of kissing different boys recently and how often their mouths have resembled Kageyama’s, small and shapely, expressive. _Come on_ , he thinks, aggressive, finding that he’s become the desperate party. _Come on come on come on_. Kageyama swallows again and leans down, just enough for Hinata to get his arms around his neck and close the gap between them.

Like their early days of playing together, what they lack in control they make up for in enthusiasm. It’s messy and slippery and wonderful, and Hinata keeps grinning into the kisses, licking at Kageyama’s mouth and feeling warmth spill down his spine. Kageyama has on that same, funny, focused look he gets during games, as he bites on Hinata’s bottom lip and then shoves his tongue as deep as it’ll go, and the corners of Hinata’s mouth ache from being stretched open, and it’s frankly awesome to be wanted that much and to reciprocate with vigor. He digs his nails into the ropey muscles of Kageyama’s lower back, and in reply Kageyama presses into him hard, sucking the air out of his mouth, and they lose their balance; Hinata falls, back slamming into the tile floor, dragging Kageyama on top of him.

The weight of those narrow hips on his makes him feel the filthiest he’s ever felt about another person, so much that he forgets they’re making out on the wet floor beside a public pool. Everything he does is so instinctive, especially now when he’s working with next-to-no experience—kissing a girl once behind the school and _this_ have unbelievably little in common. His body wants things it doesn’t know how to ask for. Friction, mainly. He pushes his hips up and Kageyama jerks out of their kiss, his entire body stiffening.

“Stop that,” he gasps, when Hinata tries it again. Kageyama attempts to crawl off him, but he’s got hands fisted into the taller boy’s shirt, holding him back.

“Do you like it?”

He grunts and pries Hinata’s fingers away, clambering to his feet. “Shut up. Not here.” Even in the weird light Hinata can see the shadow of a deep blush on his face, and he lies there grinning up and giggling.

“You do like it, huh?”

“Shut up,” mutters Kageyama, now grabbing at his arms to pull him off the ground.

“You like it.” Kageyama succeeds at getting him on his feet, and steadies him there, since Hinata is too intent on staring up with a manic smile to notice the unsteady placement of his own feet. “Do you like me?”

Kageyama squints at him, mouth open, as though he doesn’t understand the question. His wet hair sticks out—Hinata must’ve stuck his fingers through it. Finally, he blurts, “Obvi—course—”

“You couldn’t decide if you wanted to say ‘obviously’ or ‘of course’?”

“I can’t believe you’re teasing me right now,” he says roughly, turning away, but Hinata catches him by the wrist. He keeps smiling.

“I like you too, Kageyama-kun. Do you want to come over to my apartment?”

The agitation flees from Kageyama’s face, replaced with wonder. His blush deepens. “Right now?”

Hinata bounces toward him on tip toes, impatient, grabbing at the damp hem of Kageyama’s shirt. “Yeah! Now.”

“I need to shower and get into dry clothes…”

“You’ve got a change in your bag, right? You can use my bathroom!”

“Hinata,” says Kageyama, slowly. He sounds serious. Hinata sinks back on to his feet and feels the smile slide off his lips. “Just give me two hours, I need to—I need to go and—” Strangeness and confusion circle his expression, like he fears the entropy of the moment might undo him. Understanding slides over Hinata coolly, soothing any concern of second thoughts and broken engagements, and he shakes his head.

“It’s okay. Go do whatever.” He manages another smile and Kageyama peeks down, embarrassed.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! I’ll eat dinner and change my clothes, too.”

“Okay.”

Hinata nods, still feeling like he could float right off the ground. Kageyama takes a step toward the bleachers to retrieve his things, then turns back for a second and hesitates. Hinata is about to reassure him again— _it’s all right, I’m excited to see you later, I can wait_ —but Kageyama leans down to press a quick kiss to his cheek. He hangs there by his ear and mutters, “Bye.” And Hinata’s stomach churns as he stays frozen to that spot, giving a little wave as his teammate, friend, partner goes. Then he’s alone and the raw nervous jubilation creeps from his stomach to his limbs and he starts to laugh, immune to the cold dampness of his clothes, stomping his feet in the puddles they’d left by the pool.

* * *

His relentless commitment to patience for Kageyama's sake can't make the next couple of hours pass any faster. The shower he takes doesn’t last ten minutes (it’s cold, has to be) and after preparing a small dinner, he’s too nervous to eat it slowly.

His roommates are gone. He knew this: one has headed home for the weekend, the other spends every Saturday night with his _girlfriend_ , which used to be kind of terrifying and depressing, but now Hinata just feels—relieved. He doesn’t think he’d be able to keep it together in front of the other boys, who he really doesn’t know very well, despite his most friendly efforts. He passes time imagining reintroducing them to Kageyama, who they’ve seen but never properly met, then loudly claiming the two of them were just going to go into his room and “play video games” for a few hours, so any weird noises they might hear are… the video games.

Yeah. It’s a good thing no one is home tonight.

He tries studying. He tries texting Kenma—no response. He tries to watch some television but gets distracted by his own inability to keep still. His thoughts circle back to Kageyama, no matter what he does—to the jab of pelvic bone against his lower stomach, the half-second hardness he could’ve sworn he felt before they’d pulled apart. To that weird sensation of wanting something physical but not knowing just what—it makes him hot everywhere even though he still can’t put his finger on the urge. In all his consideration he never got much further than _kissing boys_. And now he feels stupid and naïve, for not understanding his own sexuality.

He bites his lip, then pulls his computer into his lap. Opens the browser, quickly exits out of his email—embarrassing to be reminded of assignments while preoccupied with _this_ stuff. His fingers hesitate over the keys: what exactly does he want to know? What’s his bright idea here?

He writes, in the search engine bar, _gay sex_ , and hits enter.

Mistake— _mistake_. This was a mistake.  


He is realizing the mistake and sitting there scrolling through the image search results and becoming _surer and surer_ that, oh what an _error_ , he’s fucked up.

He snaps the computer shut, unable to bring himself even to exit the browser, and starts hopping around the apartment like he's just touched a hot stove. There are— _positions_ seared across his vision, and not just between men, things that he’s heard of and things that he wouldn’t imagine people would be okay doing to each other. His face burns. Does Kageyama _know?_ Probably a little—at the party he’d seemed so comfortable with all this, he must’ve at least been thinking about it. Hinata has never really been big on fantasizing, he’s more of here-and-now-this-feels-good, purely tactile, never relying on conjured-up images of girls or boys. Maybe that’s why he has so much trouble thinking what he wants to do with Kageyama—but it’s definitely _something_.

Perfectly timed comes a knock at the door.

When he opens it, Kageyama seizes up, veritably radiating nerves, holding a… bouquet of yellow flowers wrapped in paper.

“What’s that?” asks Hinata, peering at the blossoms. He feels two inches taller just being in Kageyama’s presence; in a sense this lanky, awkward boy has always done that, made him taller.

Living up to his reputation of social ineptitude, Kageyama shoves the bouquet at him, glaring at their feet. “They’re for you.”

“Cool,” he says brightly. The petals are oval, sticking straight up from the stem and curving in at the top to make a long, narrow bud. “What kind are they?”

Red-faced, Kageyama squints at him. “I don’t know, I just...”

“Do they mean anything in the flower language?”

“What is the _flower language_?” Kageyama demands, incensed. “I went to the Seven-Eleven—I didn’t…”

Looking up from the flowers, Hinata gives him a big grin, and the tension in Kageyama’s shoulders melts away. “I like them!” Kageyama clears his throat and nods. “Do you want to come inside?” He pauses, then nods again. Hinata steps back to let him in, and Kageyama’s arm brushes his chest, and he smells the nice soapy scent of a recent shower. The closeness knocks him back to what he was doing before his friend’s arrival, and suddenly his palms are sweaty. Kageyama slips off his shoes and jacket—he’s in _nice_ clothes, Hinata realizes, what looks like the black slacks from their old Karasuno uniforms, and a button-down.

“Why are you dressed like that?” Hinata himself wears gym shorts and a t-shirt, as always, and his neck is hot from thinking about s-e-x stuff, so it’s just really super _not cool_ of Kageyama to show up here looking all well-groomed, like a person who would have opinions about… wine. Will he have to wear that everyday at his job at…. the economy? Okay, so Hinata doesn’t really know what economists do.  


But no matter what he’s wearing, Kageyama is easily flustered by Hinata; he puts his hands on his chest protectively, scowling. “What are you talking about? These clothes are good.”

“They’re…” Hinata squints, thinking maybe Kageyama has grown a little since the last time he wore his uniform, because his ankles are sticking out and the fit seems… snug. “Fine. It’s okay.” Hugging the flowers to his chest, he sticks his face into them so Kageyama won’t see him blush.

“Is anyone else home?” He peeks up to see his guest slipping further into the apartment, checking down the hall.

“No.” Hinata leaves the flowers on the entry table and follows Kageyama, who jumps when he turns and finds Hinata smiling hesitantly up at him.

“Oh.”

They stare at each other for a minute, the smile waning from Hinata’s face. The air between them feels fraught with expectations, and fears, and hesitancy—two hours ago they were all worked up on the fervor of wanting one another and everything came natural and unbidden. Now, bereft of immediacy, he has no clue where to begin, and he’s overwhelmed by nervous jitters that make him bounce on his heels. The theory consumes him that Kageyama’s flowers and slacks mean he knows something Hinata doesn’t about this, an insecurity further agitated by what he saw on the computer. And all that anxiety, he can’t hold it in, it winds up every muscle in his body and _eventually_ he’s going to—

“Have you ever done it before?” he blurts.

He can actually _see_ the blood rising in Kageyama’s face. His mouth pops open but nothing comes out, except one tiny _um_ , until he manages a harsh, terrified, “ _What_?”

Kageyama just looks and sounds so profoundly uncomfortable, standing there doing his deepest embarrassed scowl and blushing like a _maniac_ , it reminds Hinata that he’s known this boy for a while now and never once has he been any less awkward.

“Never mind.” A laugh starts up in his belly and then bubbles through his chest, until he’s almost doubled over giggling. “It was—ah, a stupid question!” Kageyama, _not a virgin_. Hilarious.

Kageyama steps toward him, Hinata unable to see his face properly for the laughter. “I mean, it’s not like— _you’ve_ never—either—”

“Of course not,” Hinata gasps for breath, using Kageyama’s fancy shirt to pull himself up. “I spent all three years of high school hanging out with _you_.” He’s grinning into Kageyama’s face and then into his mouth, a nice warm easy kiss. He hums—that’s all it takes and the tension melts into something sweeter.

“Which room is yours?” Kageyama mutters. His breath warms the end of Hinata’s nose. Hinata wraps his hand around Kageyama’s larger one and tugs him down the hall, struggling to keep his feet on the ground. He gets to pulling out and straightening his bed in the center of the room, but when he flops down and turns to beckon Kageyama, he’s greeted with the generous width of his back. Looking at the wall.

“Come over here!”

“I can’t do it in front of our senpais.” Kageyama shifts so Hinata can see that he’s pointing at the photographs of old Karasuno teams pinned up there. Hinata stuffs his face in his hands, laughing again. He’s going to laugh so much he busts something… is that how first times are supposed to go? It doesn’t seem like it, but at least he’s having fun.

“Kageyama-kun! Sit!”

Kageyama scowls at the pictures for another second, then plops down on the bed. They sit opposite each other cross-legged, Hinata grinning, Kageyama slumping so their heights match. Kageyama can’t sustain the eye contact and stares at his hands, and Hinata’s grin shrinks a little. All this time he’s been thinking that his friend would know what to do because _he_ didn’t, because that’s always been true of them before: they work not because of their similarities but because of their differences, and there would be no night without day. But in this unique case, Kageyama’s discomfort—could actually _be_ discomfort.

He leans forward, squinting, and Kageyama squirms under the scrutiny. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Kageyama mumbles. Their noses are getting closer, but Hinata doesn’t go in for a kiss. He’s not smiling anymore.

“We don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.”

Some of the bashfulness disappears from Kageyama’s expression—there it is again, his _game_ face, just like when they kissed by the pool. “I’m good.” Hinata beams.

The temperature in the room must skyrocket. Hinata lies back and drags Kageyama on top of him like before, with the larger boy hanging above him propped up on his elbows. He kisses like he sets, unmatched in intensity, every movement deliberate and determined. Hinata’s lips are going to bruise, maybe, but it’s good—he tries to kiss back with everything he has, pawing at the first few buttons on that nice shirt, which is more annoying now than ever, because it’s going to take forever to get off. They don’t really talk, more sigh impatiently and make the occasional gasp of satisfied surprise—being kissed on the neck, pulling fingers through hair. Kageyama eventually lowers his hips so he’s lying between Hinata’s legs and their bodies are flush; this time he doesn’t pull away when Hinata grinds up into him, but pushes back, grunting, and Hinata gets to feel the hardness nudging at his thigh and feel himself getting harder too, in response.

He’s acutely aware of their size difference, as Kageyama arches over him, his feet dangling off the end of the little bed. His head feels fuzzy, but oddly enough, it only filters his thoughts down to essence: for the time being, the infinite existential questions he has become answerable. _What is happening?_ He gasps at the sensation of teeth on his throat. _Kageyama is huge_ — _I want him._

The clothes have to go, for convenience's sake. That’s a decision they make silently, too, breaking a kiss to start helping one another strip. They stop once they’re down to their underwear, because that feels like too much, and Kageyama gives him a little nod to show his agreement. They’re sitting back and looking at each other again, except it’s different now, with the matching tents in their boxers. Hinata remembers those pictures on the internet, the—positions, limbs everywhere. Just sitting here like this, mostly naked, Kageyama on his knees and Hinata with his legs open and akimbo, he doesn’t know where they’re going to go next. Kageyama’s pupils are huge, he’s panting, and he reaches between them to palm the front of Hinata’s shorts.

The noise that escapes him can’t be _sexy_ or anything, and neither can the expression he makes: half-yelp half-cry, and with his face scrunched, eyes screwed shut. It’s one touch but not one he’s ever felt before, and he's struck by lightning, every nerve ending curled with arousal. _That_ , that was a thing his body wanted, a thing he couldn’t name. There must be others, but this is the most important. To be touched. By Kageyama.

He tries for a kiss, hoping it’ll lead to more, but gets held off. Kageyama is looking around. “Do you have—” A hiss as Hinata nips at his collarbone. “—lotion, or—”

Lotion. Right, that could be… good. Swallowing hard, he crawls off the bed. Walking is rough but he gets the bottle from a desk drawer and tosses it to Kageyama, then rejoins him.

There’s a second where he’s worried maybe they’ve lost their rhythm, and they’ll have to start all over with fumbling—but he’s barely settled on to the bed again when Kageyama pushes him on to his back, bare chest heaving. They’ve seen each other naked enough in the baths, at training camps and in club rooms, but never with time to examine, or to appreciate the fact that all the time working out has done wonders for the lines of Kageyama’s broad chest, and the definition in his stomach, and the strength of the thighs lifting him to straddle Hinata. It’s sort of shameful, but it occurs to him that this isn’t the first time he’s looked at his best friend that way, even if he never understood why. At least, judging from the expression on Kageyama’s face, he isn’t the only guilty party.

Lotion in one hand, Kageyama slips the other inside the waistband of Hinata’s boxers and slides down them enough to free his cock, which is already embarrassingly slick. “What are you gonna do?” Hinata says, quietly, his voice strange in his throat, like he hasn’t spoken in forever.

Kageyama glances at him, and then at his cock. His jaw flinches. “What I… usually do to me, but I was going to do it to you.” Hinata’s mouth goes dry. Kageyama touches himself, of course, he knew that on some level but he had never... Kageyama squirts lotion into his palms and starts to reach down, but Hinata is sitting up.

“What about you?”

“Huh?”

“You too,” Hinata decides, feeling extremely democratic and a little jealous that he doesn’t get to do any staring, so he starts pulling off the underwear of a stunned, spluttering Kageyama. He grins at his work and then leans back, somehow both self-conscious and turned on to see that their size difference shows here too. 

In related news, Kageyama has big hands. Big enough to wrap around both their cocks at once and stroke, and it’s like that little touch before multiplied infinitely, and it just keeps going and building and getting better with every movement of his wrist. The lotion makes a disgusting sucking sound that’s somehow satisfying in combination with the heat of them _together_ and the blessed power of friction. Hinata is noisy, he knows he’s noisy, all whimpers and strangled cries, so noisy that he has to shut his eyes because Kageyama looks so _huge_ and incredible leaning over him, and that only makes him whimper more, and he’s embarrassed at the quietness of his partner in comparison—just heavy breathing and the occasional grunt as he shifts so he can pump harder.

Kageyama makes him feel good, and holy shit, it’s true. He leaves scratch marks on his partner's abdomen and around his waist, not knowing what else anyone could do with their hands in this situation except make tallymarks for every ecstatic burst of need. One stroke _rotates_ —twists them, his cock pulses—Hinata lets out a particularly undignified mewl. Above him Kageyama swears, and Hinata peeks up, realizing from the contorted expression on Kageyama’s face that he _likes_ the stupid noises. He would laugh if he weren’t busy making them, but still, his next whimper turns into a giggle. And he does it again, whimper—giggle. He descends into giggles and moans. Kageyama jerks above him, mutters, “ _Shit_!”

A sudden, wet heat blossoms on Hinata’s belly and lower chest. He doesn’t have to look to know what it is, not with the way Kageyama lets go of them and heaves, and so he lies there wincing at his own hardness, untouched to the point of pain. Everything has gone still—no more pumping or moaning, nothing. Kageyama is bending down, his head hanging by Hinata’s ear. “Sorry,” he says, sounding frustrated with himself, “I didn’t—your laugh is so fucking cute. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he manages, feeling like this is a weird time to be getting butterflies, but getting them anyway. Kageyama climbs off of him and reaches for a box of tissues on the nightstand, and Hinata has the sad aching thought that he ought to touch himself, maybe, or else he’s going to start whining again.

“Let me clean it up,” Kageyama is saying under his breath, tucking himself away before he comes back with the tissues, takes one look at Hinata’s obvious discomfort, and falls to his knees on the bed. “I’ve got it. Hold on.” He takes a tissue and starts wiping off Hinata’s stomach and chest, and then what’s left of the lotion, too. The sensation is soothing enough to keep Hinata from losing it, but when Kageyama balls up the last tissue and throws it away, he doesn’t move to get more lotion or… move at all. He sits contemplating Hinata’s cock like it’s the graph of some volleyball play, and Hinata can feel tears welling in his eyes, because Kageyama _promised_ — “I’m going to do something different,” he announces, nudging Hinata to lie back. Hinata obeys, screwing his eyes shut. At this point he’ll take anything.

He opens them pretty quickly, in order to confirm that the fucking mind-blowing sensation is indeed—Kageyama’s head between his legs, sucking. The noises clawing out of him now put the ones from earlier to absolute shame, but this puts every mildly sexual thing he’s ever felt to absolute shame, it’s so hot and wet and there’s tongue and he lasts—half a minute, maybe a little more, trying to bat Kageyama’s head away in warning because he can’t make words, just desperate noises. But it doesn’t work, and he comes bucking into Kageyama’s mouth, which feels disgusting but mostly amazing, like white-spots-across-his-vision, immediately-collapse-into-a-pile-of-jelly amazing.

After a very long, dizzy moment of catching his breath and returning focus to his eyes, he spies Kageyama sitting at his feet, wiping his lips on a tissue and gulping a few times. “You swallowed it?” Hinata asks, eyes widening.

“Most of it, yeah.”

“Oh, I—I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were going to—”

“I wanted to,” says Kageyama simply, as if it were nothing. Hinata sits up slowly, pulling his shorts back up. Wanted to… do that. He grins.

“That’s so gross, Kageyama-kun.” Glaring, Kageyama crawls toward him, kicking back the covers so they can lie together. “Are you gonna grow my babies in your stomach? I’m too young to be a father.” Hinata has no idea what time it is, he realizes, but it must be late; it’s been dark out for hours.

Kageyama puts an arm on either side of Hinata’s head. His expression lies in shadow. “I bet when you do it to me, you’ll swallow too.” Hinata has a feeling he’s right, so he doesn’t have a comeback, he just beams. Kageyama lies so that they’re on their sides facing each other; it’s the only way the single bed really accommodates both of them. They wind their forearms together. Hinata already feels his eyes wanting to close—after today, even _he_ is tired.

“Shouyou.”

He pries them open again. Kageyama is looking at him with a scrunched nose, sounding weird, though Hinata doesn’t quite know why. His hair is sticking to his forehead from the sweat and his lips are swollen. He looks… sweet. Pretty.

“Yeah?”

“I just wanted to try calling you that.”

Oh—so something _was_ strange after all. He pokes his face a little closer to Kageyama’s. “Tobio.” It’s cumbersome and unfamiliar. “To-bi-o, To- _bi_ -o. Tohh, bio.” He laughs, Kageyama is pulling faces. All Hinata can hear in his head when he says Kageyama’s name too long is, “ _Tobio-chaaan~._ ” Nausea comes over Kageyama’s expression.

“Please stop.”

“ _Tobio-chaaan~_ ,” says Hinata again, through a laugh. Kageyama jostles him and Hinata tries to roll away, stuffing his face into the pillow, but Kageyama pulls them back together and crawls over him, moving in for a kiss. Hinata shrieks and shoves him away. “No! Cum-mouth, disgusting!”

“It came out of you,” Kageyama snorts, and when he tries again Hinata lets his mouth open under Kageyama's, figuring that in the long run, this will probably look like one of their less filthy moments. And disgusting can be kind of cool, sometimes, in a weird way. The kiss is slow and careful and good, not very like any kiss they’ve shared so far, but sleepily Hinata hopes there will be more like that. Kageyama traces tiny circles on the inside of his palm while their mouths slide together, instead of holding his hand, as if mapping out a secret. It’s not so bad to go slow sometimes, to pay attention to little things like that, when they’re worth paying attention to.

They break the kiss and Kageyama lays his forehead against Hinata’s. They breathe in; they exhale. It’s not cold but Hinata shivers. Three years they’ve known each other, three years of scrapes literal and figurative, of wins and losses, of pain and growth, all leading to their bare limbs tangled on this narrow bed in Hinata’s college dorm room, smelling like sweat and cum, completely enthralled with each other.

And… he’s not surprised. Maybe all this was more inevitable than unlikely.

Eyes closed, he smiles. “I _knew_ you weren’t joking.”

“Mmm?” Kageyama presses their noses together and then breathes out, the warm air skimming Hinata’s cheek.

“When you kissed me and you said it was a joke. I knew you weren’t joking, you don’t have a _sense of humor_.”

Hinata can’t keep from laughing, and Kageyama starts to laugh too, his body shaking, burying his face in the crook of Hinata’s neck. They laugh for a long time, hysterically. Kageyama rolls off him and they lie shoulder-to-shoulder, barely fitting on the mattress, laughing. He laughs so much he starts to feel light-headed, and when it dies down, after a delightful spell, exhaustion washes over him again. His eyes fall closed of their own accord, and he senses the warm presence beside him getting up. There's a series of thumps and the door opens, he hears footsteps fading down the hall, then the sink in the bathroom running and spitting: Kageyama rinsing his mouth out. Hinata lets out another soft, tired giggle.

Kageyama returns to the bedroom and settles back down at Hinata’s side in the darkness, and Hinata turns so they can lie with their backs pressed together.

A couple of minutes pass and he’s slipping fast into sleep—from the shallowness of his breathing, he suspects Kageyama might already be out. But the room fills with dim electronic glow: Hinata’s phone lighting up on the desk, where he’d tossed it when they came in. He reaches up to check it. A reply from Kenma… Hinata had forgotten he even sent that text, asking if they could talk.

(00:45) _hi sorry_  
(00:45) _whats up_  
(00:45) _u good_?

It must have sounded serious, he realizes, rubbing his eyes. So much has happened that he’s going to remember forever, but it’s only been a couple of hours. What’s up, _is_ he good? He chews his lip.

(00:46) i’m fine!!  
(00:46) are u going to sleep soon

(00:46) _no why_

His pulse speeds up, but he can’t stop himself from typing, a day of adrenaline has finally caught up with him. Thoughts of sleep fade into the background—he wants to write it all down, to be sure, to record history.

(00:46) can i tell you something…

* * *

“When I come to visit, we can go fruit picking… though, that sounds kind of boring. Did you know that Tsukuba is home to the third oldest working Shinto shrine in Japan? I didn’t! That… sounds kind of boring.” Hinata lowers the guidebook, _Ibaraki On A Budget_. One fact he does know, having memorized it, and it’s frankly more interesting than any of the tourist information: “Tsukuba has sent over sixty athletes to the Olympics since 1973.”

“I don’t think I can do this.”

Hinata glances sideways at Kageyama. Where they’re camped out on the platform at Sendai Station, he stares off into space, seeing something far distant from the bannered advertisements for cleaning supplies. Just visible at the end of the terminal, the sky outside churns darkly, threatening rain.

“Are you talking about…”

“I can’t go to Tsukuba,” Kageyama announces, starting to stand, but Hinata drags him back down.

“The Shinkansen will be here in five minutes, it’s too late to change your mind!”

Kageyama twitches, but relaxes into his seat finally. Hinata watches him—despite having encouraged the choice at every turn, he’d felt as disappointed as he was excited when Kageyama told him the Tsukuba coaches were willing to renew his scholarship offer, providing he didn’t finish out the year at Tohoku but came straight to Tsukuba at the end of term to begin training. That was a few months ago, and Hinata admits he brought it on himself: he was the one to hold Kageyama’s hand on the way to tell his dad, he was the one to help box up all his belongings and put them in the post. He was the one to sit up until two o’clock in the morning, running flashcards with economic formulas he could barely pronounce, so Kageyama could leave Tohoku with the best possible marks.

And so it’s with a lot of very conflicted feelings that Hinata is seeing off his boyfriend of nearly six months today.

Kageyama leans forward, puts his head in his hands. “Shit. Shit.”

“Don’t be so nervous, you’re going to do great. They really want you there.” _And I really want you here_ , he thinks, letting himself be selfish in private, because he has to do it somewhere.

Kageyama inhales deeply and sits up, drawing himself to his full height, his eyes unfocused but swarmed with intensity. “You really piss me off, you know,” he murmurs. Hinata’s stomach flips.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“You told me to do this, and then you dumped me for it.”

He winces. “‘Dumped’ isn’t the right…” Tact has never come easy to him, and it’s so hard when he can feel the hurt rolling off Kageyama.

“Once I get on that train,” Kageyama asks, his voice straining, “are we still together?”

He stares at Hinata and Hinata stares back. An unavoidable question. In a way, Kageyama is right. He lowers his chin, eyes on the bench between them.

“No.”

“Dumped,” Kageyama confirms bitterly.

“I just… I’ll still come see you and we can hang out, and we can even hook up!”

“I don’t want to hook up with you,” he grunts. It was a stupid offer to make; Hinata knows sex is the least of Kageyama's concerns. To Kageyama it's only a form of expression, symbolizing what's between them.

Hinata swallows, feeling so nervous he could vibrate. “It’s going to be a long three years, and long distance is so hard—”

“So you don’t want to put in the effort?” Kageyama snaps, and anger flares in Hinata for the first time during this conversation. The last thing you could accuse him of is _not trying_.

“That’s not fair.” He doesn’t deserve to be berated for making the most adult decision he’s ever made—he doesn't deserve to be berated when he knows Kageyama understands perfectly how hard this is on his end. It’s a sign of how much he’s grown lately that he could even bring himself to ask for something as preemptive as a break-up.

“I know. Shit.” Kageyama runs a hand over his face, embarrassed. “Sorry, I know. I get it.”

Hinata frowns and bounces his knee nervously for a moment. He believes in better goodbyes than this, that a wonderful thing should end wonderfully. He grabs at the backpack by his feet. “I got you something. I had to order it special because they don’t have it in the stores yet, okay, so don’t laugh.” He hands a squinting Kageyama the gift, wrapped in the same packing it arrived with. Kageyama tears into it without abandon, then holds up the shirt.

 _TEAM JAPAN  
_ _RIO 2016_

“I know you won’t be there in 2016,” Hinata mutters, jiggling his knee harder, “It’s just for… thinking about, I guess.”

Kageyama lowers the shirt into a ball in his lap and leans over it, his face darkened and obscure. He doesn’t speak and Hinata feels a pang of embarrassment because maybe he made it worse for Kageyama, and that would defeat the purpose of his big sacrifice. Fears of loneliness aside, he only wants things to be the way they should, with Kageyama fulfilling his potential. He doesn’t want to cause any more pain in the life of this boy he loves.

In the distance down the track, the train appears, honking cruelly.

“Shit,” Kageyama mutters, and when he starts to get up Hinata can see him blinking rapidly. Hinata gets up too and as they stand opposite one other it’s impossible for Kageyama to hide the fact that his eyes are red and wet. He pulls his bag over his shoulder, and clutches the shirt to his chest.

This is it, the goodbye, and Hinata is lucky that smiling comes so easily to him, because he can tell Kageyama warms under the grin on his face. Even if it is a grin of desperation, trying to force himself to feel as okay as he looks. Kageyama opens his mouth to say something but just ends up shaking his head with a scowl—if he tries to talk, he really will cry, Hinata guesses. The train barrels closer, blaring its horn, and months later Hinata will find himself still flinching at the sound of an approaching train. Beyond the platform’s awning rain has begun to fall, picking up fast. They have seconds left together—not really, not infinitely, because the future is limitless—but here ends an essential chapter in their lives. Someone needs to speak.

“Kageyama-kun.” Hinata swallows hard. He watches his teammate, friend, partner wipe away tears with the back of his hand. He doesn’t know what to say, because the sheer weight of the loss is catching up with him in this final moment, and he does hate to lose—people and volleyball matches alike. “Kageyama,” he says again, just to feel the name on his mouth for the last time in a long time, “We will never be exes. Do you understand what I mean? Never.”

They are not over—they will never be over— _could_ never be over. He has learned so much in the past year, but of this one thing he’s only grown surer: you can’t leave someone who is a part of you.

Kageyama heaves a sob, then, and they step in for a hug, clinging to each other. His friend’s torso is shaking and Hinata squeezes tighter—Kageyama pulls back and kisses him hard enough it hurts. The train whizzes by them, slowing. Kageyama stays latched to Hinata’s mouth, tears smearing his cheeks and salty between their lips, until the train comes to a stop. He lets go, and when the doors open Hinata has to give him a nudge before he steps on. People in the station and on the train are watching them.

Kageyama just stands there right inside the doors looking at Hinata, still on the platform. “Go find your seat,” Hinata tells him, really smiling now. Even in this moment that’s sad and painful in all those deep human ways, Kageyama’s ineptitude endears him.

“Bye,” Kageyama chokes, “Bye, Hinata. Goodbye.” The doors slide closed. Hinata waves. His chin is trembling. He didn’t want to cry in front of Kageyama—to make it simpler—but when the train rolls away, taking Kageyama with it, he feels his resolve weaken.

The tracks empty. The sound of the train fades. It’s not quiet in this public place, but Hinata hears silence in his life.

He grabs his things and when he exits the station to travel back to campus, the sky has opened up.

It is a deluge. Schoolgirls run by him shrieking to get under the nearest cover, businessmen swear while fighting their umbrellas, a father pulls up the hood on his son’s raincoat. But Hinata doesn’t flee the storm; he minces his steps on the journey, water seeping through the bottoms of his shoes and the sleeves of his jacket. The rain is warm and strong, and it bleeds with the tears welling in his eyes. He lets himself get soaked to the bone, thinking of October rain, and being in love, and victory.

**Author's Note:**

> The original assignment for this was "Kagehina meet in college when they both join a intramural volleyball team. After three years of misled rivalry, unfulfilled promises, and growing up, they are reminded of what it was like to be younger, braver people."
> 
> I think this pretty much fulfills that request, or it should considering it got pretty OUT OF HAND length-wise. In my head there's a sequel to this fic that sees them reunited in a few years. It's... possible that will get written, and that it will be even longer, considering how much I enjoyed writing this one.
> 
> Thanks for reading. I'm bigspoonnoya on Tumblr and Twitter as well and I accept tears as valid currency!


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